Search - Steely Dan :: Pretzel Logic

Dan C. from VERGENNES, VT
Reviewed on 7/5/2018...

Great album. Whereas the sophomore effort, Countdown to Ecstasy, showed Steely Dan unfolding their underlying jazz influences, Pretzel Logic combines those structures with blues. The cover of "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo" is retrospectively somewhat pointless, but for those of us who came to jazz, at least in part, through Fagen and Becker, was instructive and somewhat subversive to find on a "rock" album at the time. Pretzel logic is more bluesy than anything on the proceeding two albums, except possibly "Dirty Work." "Monkey In Your Soul" is about the bluesy back-beat in soul music as much as it is about any individual addressed by the singer/narrator. "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" was a worthy though unlikely hit, with instrumentation, arrangement, and recording that make it, if anything, even fresher today than when this album was released. "Any Major Dude" and "Barrytown" are fun, the first a bit r&b inflected, and the second funked up. "Parker's Band" is a jazz-inspired rave, followed by "Through With Buzz," a kind of antiphonal movement, with their patently elliptical lyrics. "Charlie Freak" at the time (I was 14) seemed pretty heavy to me, but now seems lyrically the shakiest of this album, and would sound preachy to my ear, if the singer/narrator were not impeaching himself.

Fagan's voice bothers some people, the way that Dylan's does, or Brian Eno's. There aren't a lot of well-known jazz oboists, but his voice has something of that quality, and it's capable of a lot more subtlety than some would credit.

Formally, Steely Dan are moving back towards rock formal economy from the excursive stuff in Countdown, striking a balance between that and experimentation, and exponentializing some of their musical underpinnings, all at the same time. It's very satisfying, and with Katz at the helm, beautifully recorded to the usual very high specs. These are pieces that would catch your ear on album-oriented radio, but that repay focused listening with good gear. When this album came out, then Katy Lied, then Royal Scam, I thought they'd keep coming forever. They seemed a musical cornucopia.

Eclectic and Different Record

David Shanet Clark | Atlanta Georgia | 04/19/2010

(4 out of 5 stars)

"The Pretzel Logic disc has jazzier and more experimental material and is probably not as familiar to most listeners as other Steely Dan albums. Very interesting song structure on "Through with Buzz" and "Barrytown" ..."Parkers' Band" is also very strong and this album doesn't have the technical (hiss/high EQ) problems of Katy Lied.......definitely a good purchase if you want to round out your collection of Steely Dan with less familiar but classic tracks."

Impressive, if not so much so as the first two

mianfei | 05/09/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"On their first two albums, Steely Dan introduced the most literate lyrics and some complex music to turn rock into something it never was before and has very rarely been since. The story-in-song style of Fagen and Becker's songwriting sticks with a listener amazingly well over long periods, as I can testify with "Do It Again", their first song to be publicised and probably remaining their best of all time. 1973's Countdown to Ecstasy was even better, with its long, psychedelic songs and amazing lyrics that often touched on the most serious social questions.



Unfortunately "Countdown to Ecstasy" did not sell as well as their debut Can't Buy a Thrill, with the result that Steely Dan turned towards much shorter and less complex songs for their third album "Pretzel Logic". This change of tone is illustrated right from the opening track "Rikki Don't Lost That Number", which became their only hit on the Australian singles charts, and is a relatively straightforward piano ballad that lacks the amazing story-in-song character of their best work. However, with the second track "Night By Night", the Dan show that they can transform the slow-burn psychedelia of "Show Biz Kids" from their previous album onto pure pop. The precise, staccato horn riff is totally memorable, as are the lyrics. The slower "Barrytown" carries on from this with a beauty that is genuinely sly, as does the more familiar of never-played-on-radio "Any Major Dude Will Tell You". "Parker's Band" is a dense, driving piece that is amazingly tuneful: so much so that is seems as much like electrified jazz as Miles Davis and Ornette Coleman on their fusion works ever did.



"Through With Buzz" is the shortest song Steely Dan ever put onto record, but it is really funny and to the point. The same is true of the acoustic "With A Gun", but the title tune moves back to the fierce and catchy jazz/pop of the best moments earlier on "Pretzel Logic". The vocals are unusually melodic for Fagen, but are even more effective, and the story of a failed rock star is written in a way that removes almost all the usual limitations of the genre. The two guitar solos that finish "Pretzel Logic" are also specially good both for the solidity of the playing and variety in tone, with the first much lower-pitched than the second - though even the finalé solo does not rise to the high pitches common in more modern guitar solos.



All in all, even if it does not quite rise to the level of their first two albums, "Pretzel Logic" stands as another essential release by one of the great artists of the 1970s - an artist in words as much as in music."