The Dude Ranch Above the Sea
December 09, 2025 at 01:14AMFor The New York Review of Books, Philip Clark considers the work of Steely Dan, a band whose early music and sound relied heavily on studio wizardry for their recordings. The band were so particular about their artistic vision that they’d splice prerecorded, improvised jazz solos into their songs, elements that could never be duplicated live to their exacting satisfaction. “Steely Dan’s music provoked undeniable pleasure, but its methods were synthetic and clinical, and their decision to name themselves after the high-tech dildo from William S. Burroughs’s 1959 novel Naked Lunch felt especially apt,” writes Clark.
In albums like Can’t Buy a Thrill (1972), Pretzel Logic (1974), and Aja (1977), they cultivated a sleek, polished pop that was marinated in jazz, blues, Latin, and rock and roll. Their songs had both a melodic, high-fidelity sheen—a gift to radio airplay—and a level of compositional integrity and instrumental elan that left aficionados agog. Lyrically, they developed a fixation—naysayers considered it an affectation—with pairing waspish observations about social outsiders, the venality of pop culture, and men riding out their midlife crises with relentlessly feel-good music, the harmonies never smudging in sympathy with the deranged words. At a time when potent presences like David Bowie, Joni Mitchell, Al Green, and Diana Ross—as well as prog-rock groups like Kansas and Emerson, Lake & Palmer—were all remaking pop, Steely Dan’s tics and obsessions positioned them distinctively: the subjects of their songs could be relatable, but their fanatical studio perfectionism seemed like it was governed by a secret formula. The deeper you listened, the harder it was to pin down.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/12/08/the-dude-ranch-above-the-sea/
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