Everything Must Go

Performer: Steely Dan
Artist: Bill Charlap; Chris Potter
Producer: Walter Becker; Donald Fagen
Distributor: WEA (Distributor)

Notes: Steely Dan: Walter Becker (vocals, guitar, bass, percussion); Donald Fagen (vocals, piano, Wurlitzer piano, Fender Rhodes piano, Clavinet, organ, synthesizer, percussion). Additional personnel: Jon Herrington, Hugh McCracken (guitar); Walt Weskopf (alto & tenor saxophones); Chris Potter (tenor saxophone); Roger Rosenber (baritone saxophone); Ken Hitchcock (clarinet); Tony Kadleck, Michael Leonhart (trumpet); Jim Pugh (trombone); Ted Baker (piano, Fender Rhodes piano, Wurlitzer piano); Bill Charlap (piano, Fender Rhodes piano); Keith Carlock (drums); Gordon Gottleib (percussion); Cindy Mizelle, Catherine Russell, Carolyn Leonhart, Tawatha Agee, Ada Dyer, Michael Harvey, Brenda White-King (background vocals). Recorded at Sear Sound, Skyline Studios, and River Sound, New York, New York; Hyperbolic Sound, Maui and Bearsville Studios, Bearsville, New York. After a 20-year layoff, Steely Dan returned in 2000 with TWO AGAINST NATURE. In the face of that double-decade layoff, the three-year wait for EVERYTHING MUST GO seems like a drop in the bucket. Like its predecessor, EVERYTHING harkens back to the classic '70s Dan jazzy pop sound, with some minor adjustments. The bluesy Walter Becker guitar leads that were a key element of TWO AGAINST NATURE are even more prevalent here (Becker even takes a lead vocal this time around), and the earlier album's harmonically simpler song structures and arrangements are pared down a bit further here. Other than that, it's blessedly business-as-usual for Becker and his accomplice Donald Fagen. When they're not looking askance at drug culture, the digital age, and the onset of old age, they're waxing satirical about sexual/social dynamics, and on the title track, providing the perfect, biting-but-poignant anthem for the post-9/11, post-Internet boom economic tumble. Guest appearances by jazz hotshots pianist Bill Charlap and saxman Chris Potter add melodic interest, but it's Becker and Fagen's gloriously twisted worldview that remains the fulcrum of the action.

Entertainment Weekly (6/13/03, pp.92-6) - "...Offering lyrical nervousness and musical Novocaine in equal shots..." - Rating: B+ Uncut (01/04, pp.84-7) - Ranked #30 in Uncut's "Albums Of The Year 2003" Uncut (6/03, p.116) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...The prevailing standards of composition and performance remain high..."

Steely Dan--a name derived from a sex toy in William Burroughs's "Naked Lunch"--spent much of the '70s atop the charts with jazzy, smart-ass pop-rock. The brainchild of hipsters Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, Steely Dan was less a band than it was a laboratory for the duo's singular musical vision, deftly rendered by a cast of studio heavyweights to rule the airwaves, but (owing to either stagefright or sheer impossibility) rarely trotted out on stage. After almost disappearing for more than a decade, Becker and Fagen had re-emerged by the '90s, throwing fans a few bones before finally taking the plunge into a full-fledged reunion.

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