Search - Donald Fagen :: Tomorrow's Girls / Confide in Me (Non-Album)

Nice alternative take on "Girls", and great gospel rave-up

Walter J. Breen, Jr. | San Francisco | 07/14/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"First of all, I should point out that I actually accidentally purchased the 2-cut CD *single*, not the 5-cut CD/EP that I thought I was getting. (Sometimes I wish artists or whoever makes these decisions would stop all this cute stuff and not make it so hard for semi-obsessed people like myself to complete their collections. But I digress...) The alternate cut of "Tomorrow's Girls" which is on *both* the single and the EP has a clearer, bouncier sound -- the drums and percussion are really outstanding -- I wish he'd used this soundscape on the whole Kamakiriad album, which I think sounds sort of compressed and artificial. "Confide In Me" is interesting, sort of a gospel/blues rave-up rave-up, very heavy on the piano and harmonica, and I don't know when he wrote it, but it would indeed have sounded out of place on Kamakiriad -- great song, anyway, worth the price of the single -- quite different from anything I've every heard him or Fagen & Becker do before or since; the five-cut EP, which I'm looking forward to hearing, has an instrumental "Shanghai Surprise", and a bonus of "Century's End", which is available elsewhere, notably on Steely Dan's "Gold" compilation, or on the "Bright Lights, Big City" soundtrack."