Steely Dan: Aja

You like this, don't you? I'm only guessing, but I bet you do.

I like it too… but, well, you can hear a 'but' coming, can't you? I played it on my computer, and realised that wasn't really doing it justice. I had to play it on the hi-fi, sat dead centre between the speakers, with the volume up so I could hear every nuance. Then I heard it the way it was meant to be heard, and of course it's fantastic. Now, as I write, I'm playing it on headphones.

Even if I'm not exactly against the polish and the sheen of the album, I still feel I could only take it in small doses. And I don't really know what they're singing about. I mean, I can read the lyric sheet, but nothing on it really connects. The Blue Nile are another band that I feel like this about: really fine, but at risk of being fine for fine's sake.

Then I can't get over the bad-tempered bile that Fagen and Becker come out with every time I hear anything from them. They're worse than Van Morrison! The CD booklet reproduces the original sleeve notes for the album, and then adds to this a protracted assault on the writers of those notes (if you didn't like them. guys, you could have just left them out this time?) and a load of whining about their master tapes and re-issues not being given the respect they deserve. It's all in the same tone as their humourless 'open letter' about a recent film that borrowed a character from one of their songs. (The letter got them some publicity at little cost, and, guess what, they were just starting a tour at the same time.)

MusicBrainz entry for this album