Steely Dan - Gaucho
#454
by Paul Zickler
November 21 1980
Steely Dan
Gaucho
Genre: Not Rock, Not Jazz Enough
Allen’s Rating: 2.5 out of 5
Paul’s Rating: 3.5
Highlights:
Babylon Sisters
Hey Nineteen
Gaucho
Time Out of Mind
Are we still doing the whole “let’s pretend Steely Dan was terrible” thing? I figured once Walter Becker died, people would give up that “I’m so punk rock I hate Steely Dan for being good at playing their instruments” garbage. Have they given it up? They have. Oh good.
Steely Dan released some excellent albums. Sadly, this is not one of them. Yes, there is outstanding musicianship on display. There certainly should be, since 42 different musicians played on the record, which only has seven songs on it. Did you know that Prince played and sang every note on his first album? Now, I’m not saying For You is better than Gaucho, but Gaucho is definitely not 42 times better than For You.
I guess the problem with Steely Dan is that, no matter how beautiful all those layers of sound are, if they’re not built around an interesting song, they don’t accomplish much. “Babylon Sisters” starts out as an interesting song, but by the 3:00 mark, it’s pretty much lost its way, and there’s another 2:38 to go. Same with “Hey Nineteen,” which I remember liking quite a bit when it came out as a single. I’m thinking the single version probably ran about 3:30 because the last minute and a half of the album version goes nowhere and does nothing. Compare either of these to earlier Steely Dan songs like “Aja” and “Deacon Blues,” both of which were over 7 minutes long. There’s not a moment in either of those songs where I’m just waiting for it to end the way I am with most of the songs on Gaucho.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s not a bad album. I really dig the title track, which it turns out they kinda stole from Keith Jarrett (he threatened to sue). It works because it’s actually jazz fusion, and Donald Fagen actually sounds invested in the vocals, not just trying to be smooth. Plus, it ends when it should end, right after the last chorus. I’m also fond of “Time Out of Mind,” an almost funky tune (emphasis on “almost” - Bootsy Collins got nothin’ to fear from these guys) with some tasty Mark Knopfler guitar work and a bridge that could’ve been lifted from the Doobie Brothers’ Minute By Minute album. (I loved that album when I was 13. Sue me.)
The other songs are just kinda there.
Steely Dan split up for more than a decade after this was released. During that time, Donald Fagen released The Nightfly, a stone cold classic in my humble opinion, mostly because the songs are tighter, and the jazz influences are more pronounced. Unlike Gaucho, half the songs are under 4:30, and all of them are actually fun to listen to.
https://open.spotify.com/album/5fIBtKHWGjbjK9C4i1Z11L?si=j5sL3I_BRBuh8397_GIXwg
No comments:
Post a Comment