Donald Fagen-Sunken Condos

I am also a big Steely Dan and Donald Fagen fan but haven't been able to warm up to this one. Other than the muffled midrange mentioned above, this LP has too much of a recycled quality, like we have heard these songs before. I remember one cut sounding amazingly like a song on SD Two Against Nature. Again, I always feel lucky when SD or DF release a new recording, but this one is too homogeneous and covers no new ground. Listen to recent releases by Paul Simon, The Cars, and the Doobie Brothers--all of them sound fresh and the cuts are not all woven from the same cloth. Maybe I will warm up to it with a few repeated listens.

Haven't heard this one yet, but for me, their last few releases have all been formulaic. They keep trying to remake Gaucho, or parts of Aja, but the songs just don;t have the edge that they did back then.

Time to move on fella's. Take a chance on something new and stop trying to just "cash in".

I still like cerebral funk...even when derivative of itself.

I auditioned it, not enough of a departure from him/them to entice me to buy.

Okay, I now own this album as a CD, a hi-res download from HDTracks and as an iTunes set. And I must say something that as a Steely Dan / Donald Fagen fanatic since my high school days, I never thought I'd say: I hate this record. The sonics - while best to my ears on the hi-res FLAC download, still sound muffled and muddy to me. (RIP Roger Nichols!) And the writing is so below what DF is capable of. What a bummer.