Steely Dan – Katy Lied – CD

The last of the truly classic first four Steely Dan albums, the 1975 Katy Lied also sounds like the best. While retaining a solid rock foundation, the music finds Walter Becker and Donald Fagen engaging their jazz influences more successfully than ever; Fagen’s piano fills alone are some of the most impressive music laid to tape in the 1970s. The songs, too, rate with the team’s very best, whether coolly anticipating global financial collapse (“Black Friday”), celebrating the legacy of a mob-hit victim (“Daddy Don’t Live in That New York City No More”), or letting the Dan’s guard down with a pained three-minute survey of life on Earth (“Any World [That I’m Welcome To]”).

1. Black Friday
2. Bad Sneakers
3. Rose Darling
4. Daddy Don’t Live In That New York City No More
5. Doctor Wu
6. Everyone’s Gone To the Movies
7. Your Gold Teeth
8. Chain Lightning
9. Any World (That I’m Welcome To)
10. Throw Back the Little Ones