Aja <\/i>is the moment when everything Steely Dan had been trying to do came together in one glorious moment.<\/p>\n
The album is a triumph of fusion jazz, pop songcraft and even a little rock and funk. Building on the character study started on The Royal Scam<\/i>, the seven songs here wind through intricate, beautiful suites, songs that both sound glossy on the surface and have an undercurrent worthy of repeated listens. <\/p>\n
The swagger of “Black Cow” is a perfect album opener, followed by the winding, eight-minute title track. Both are overshadowed by “Deacon Blues,” perhaps the finest track Steely Dan ever recorded, a wistful seven-minute jazz-rock explosion driven by kinetic drumming, urgent saxophone solos and downright human lyrics from Donald Fagen. <\/p>\n
“Josie” is pure funk, with excellent slide bass work, while “Peg” is a straight-up rock song with good vocal harmonies. Even “Home At Last” works its way under your skin; only “I Got The News” fails to excite.\u00a0<\/p>\n
You can argue that the production is too perfect, the performances rehearsed, but you would be wrong. Aja <\/i>is a shining example of fusion jazz\/rock\/pop that has few equals. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":26890,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[6277],"rating":[5613],"class_list":["post-38189","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-steely-dan","rating-rating-a-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38189"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38189\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38189"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=38189"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=38189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}