Donald Fagen - The Nightfly (1982)

Donald Fagen is one half of Steely Dan, or at least one of the two major creative minds behind Steely Dan. My dear brother went on an insane Steely Dan kick not too long ago during which he not only consumed every vinyl Steely Dan album he could get his hands on (his taste for vinyl could not be quenched!) but also got into the duo's solo efforts. Steely Dan gets a ton of cred mostly from people who are deeply into music, but I don't hear a lot of people heaping as much praise on Donald Fagen's solo stuff, or the other guy's solo stuff assuming it exists. In my experience when a member of a mega-famous group goes solo their output tends to suffer. If anyone has a positive example of solo artist's material being better than their mega-famous band's material please share.

Anyhoo, I suppose I may have an example of that on my hands and the only way to figure it out is to plug in my ears and have a listen. One final note, I'm also concerned that this might be another Hearts & Bones or Arc Of A Diver. In those cases an artist I really respected got swallowed by the 80s cheesebug which farted out some of the worst synthesized "rock" music I've ever heard.

Ugh... I'm trying to be fair to Donald Fagen, because on the one hand, Steely Dan did a lot of organ and synthesizer based music in the 70s, so the opening track on The Nightfly isn't that big of a departure. But synthesized trumpets still sound awful. Based on my limited knowlege of Donald Fagen and the other Steely Dan guy it's not entirely clear what the difference will be between Fagen's solo stuff and true Steely Dan music. The vocals even sound pretty much the same, so maybe Fagen going solo is completely pointless to the music-buying public.

I think "Ruby Baby" featured real sax and trumpets, which is nice, but it also featured some stalkerish lyrics. Same thing appears in "New Frontier", though in that song Fagen is clearly talking to a girl other than Ruby. There really isn't a lot I can think to say about The Nightfly. If you like smooth, easily listening lite jazz, or a slightly watered down version of Steely Dan maybe you'll enjoy The Nightfly. It's certainly not a bad album by any stretch of the imagination. Just dull. Is that a worse sin than being bad? Probably not. But in terms of music you must hear before you die, boring music certainly doesn't fit. 2 stars.