Steely Dan - Pretzel Logic (1974)

Recently my younger brother got seriously into Steely Dan and begged me to listen to everything they'd ever done. I told him I'd get around to it sometime, but I can't just skip ahead every time someone suggested I absolutely had to listen to something. I skip around in my list often enough on my own. If I kept jumping ahead to things I wanted to listen to I'll never get to the crap that everyone would agree doesn't belong.

In any case I've at long last arrived at my first Steely Dan album. Though to be fair, I did skip ahead a few, because next on my list was Arrested Development, and I am not prepared to listen to another rap album after sitting through what felt like 4 hours of N.W.A. I like what little I've heard of Steely Dan in my life, and Pretzel Logic is a short 34-minute album, so this should be a nice break and an easy review.

The album opens with the mega-hit "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" though it is preceded by a strange percussion piece I've never heard before in the context of the song. I want to say it sounds like a muted vibraphone (upon further research it's called a flambapa). It's a peculiar choice to lead off the album in any case, and an even weirder fit with "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" even if the song does include flambapa backing. Regardless it's a killer song, though I usually like an album's best track to appear more towards the middle of the running order. I guess it depends on what the rest of the album offers.

Thus far Steely Dan is feeling like a funkier version of Dire Straits in the sense that their sound is consistent throughout but tweaked with from song to song so the album doesn't get boring. They play very easy-listening tunes with solid grooves. "Parker's Band" leads off side 2 and is the first song I felt was uninspired, or at the very least unlike Steely Dan. "Through With Buzz" is peculiar in that it's really short, only 1:34, but feels overdone with its string accompaniment.

I liked Pretzel Logic, but other than "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" it doesn't offer up anything revolutionary about Steely Dan. It's not a bad thing, Steely Dan are really good, and I'll listen to them any time. I did feel like they went back to the well a lot and used a familiar harmonizing, or a similar bass/drum pattern. When they did do something I wasn't expecting, such as "Parker's Band" it just didn't feel right- it didn't feel like a Steely Dan song.

I'm sure I'll be able to expand on these thoughts as I listen to more Steely Dan in the future. For now, I like them. 3 stars.