Donald Fagen, "Sunken Condos" (2012)

thread to come anticipate and/or stream on msn. giving it a listen now -- apprehensively, since i wasn't into morph the cat at all.

The first leaked track was fab.

so far pretty tight. i think he's going for a nightfly feel rather than try to sound especially current. "slinky thing" is my favorite of the three tracks i've heard; "memorabilia" is intriguing though and seems to be the "green earrings" of the record.

"out of the ghetto" is tremendous. the klezmer fiddle at the end shouldn't work as well as it does. doesn't feel jokey.

such a great title.

i love this

Liked the songs (that is, lyrics) on "Morph the Cat," but I've been bummed at the relative lack of tasty licks on that disc and the last couple of SD discs. Like, playing is tight, but the arrangements are pretty static, iirc.

disagree re Everything Must Go, which I recently discovered. At least six killers.

I love that album, don't get me wrong. "The Last Mall" is a great song. So is "GodWacker." etc. I just remember, say, the drum parts being pretty static. Like, just 4/4 grooves, not a lot of fills or tricky arrangements.

Trying to find this hilarious interview with the guys in the back of a taxi c. that album.

great album title

always knew he was a ballardian

don's voice sound shot on "miss marlene". a little bummed

Good interview.

love that the album title is a debussy reference.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3geejD5Dksk

"out of the ghetto" is tremendous. the klezmer fiddle at the end shouldn't work as well as it does. doesn't feel jokey.

― sriracha bishop (get bent), Tuesday, October 9, 2012 6:46 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is my fav so far.

"miss marlene" sounding pretty good too. is it the clavinet?

this is starting to sound like my 2012 holidaze album

on first listen much....livelier than Snore The Cat.

listening to this right now. Digging the groove on Slinky Thing.

Out of the Ghetto has some wild jamming on it!

Listened to this this morning. It's pretty good. Very uptempo. But isn't "Miss Marlene" basically "IGY" with new vocals?

i've tried on 2 different computers (pc and mac) to get that goddamn MSN stream to work but it won't - any advise?

it's on spotify

oh i didn't know it was out, might have to hit best buy at lunch

wow this is good so far...best thing he's done since the nightfly?

(including steely dan records)

I'm totally blown away by how good this is. To these ears, definitely his best since "Nightfly," and that includes the nu-Dan records...

at first i thought a few of the tracks here might be as inert as some of morph the cat but the whole record really opened up to me on the most recent listen. fantastic

yeah I just reviewed it. It's not at The Nightfly's level -- he's too old to take real chances -- but it's a consistent delight.

I probably need to listen to Kamakiriad and Morph the Cat again to definitively declare that Sunken Condos is his best since The Nightfly, but the fact that those two never clicked with me in the first place means I'm probably right.

i hadn't clicked with kamakiriad at all until last month. turns out it's great

Becker's last album owns this but it's still pretty good

Pretty good so far.

"Not the same without you" is such an excellent song. Love the central conceit of a guy bragging about radically effective self improvement since his girlfriend has left him.

so this is p much the best dan project since nightfly huh?

I like 'H Gang' from the last one more than anything on 'Condos'

i love "h gang" but insanity

h-gang is good, but i think there are better songs on here

but either way i meant the album as a whole

btw i love it when the chorus on "weather in my head" sounds like "they may fix the weather in the world/just like mystikal said"

huh i think kamakiriad is better than this and the last one but I do love em all.

Not the best Dan project (Everything Must Go is marginally superior) but the best Fagen solo album since '82, sure.

you guys haven't heard Becker's Circus Money, have you? really worth a listen, big improvement on his first, by far my fav 21st century Dan project.

i have not!

that one kind of snuck out for some reason

well i think it's understandable that Fagen's solo material has a higher profile, he is The Voice of SD. but i feel like Becker has come into his own as a vocalist, kind of a gravelly Warren Zevon thing (whereas Fagen is not necessarily at his best on later records), and Circus Money is more about lively musicianship than the spotlessly clean sound they've had from Gaucho onward.

LOVE Kamikiriad!

i worked an event a while back where the sound guy played Kamikiriad while we were setting up (and another event more recently where the sound guy played "F.M." for a minute -- sound guys love the Dan apparently)

Circus Money - Something about Becker's voice reminds me of Mark Eitzel. It's got an expressive sadness to it. Together with the Steely-esque arrangements, it's an interesting listen.

friend pointed out that the bass on this record is played in a slap/funk way but on an upright which has of course opened up the record to me in a whole new way

You'remy Becker-Fagen conscience, Brad.

this is a really great album

I threw this on to see what I thought of it. But jeesh. I'm listening to "Memorabilia" right now and if I hear him sing that "Have you seen the memorabilia/The trusty old memorabilia" couplet one more time, I might scream.

Am I the only one who finds the vast majority of everything Fagen's done since post-Nightfly to be totally unmemorable? I wasn't totally excited about Kamakiriad when I heard it but ever since his songs just all run together for me – with "tight" little arrangements, "tasty" guitar licks and horn charts that fill space. It all seems just totally devoid of hooks. About the only tune of his that I really remember at all from the last 20 years is "Janie Runaway."

Rant over.

"miss marlene" could fit on a dan record

give it time

Am I the only one who finds the vast majority of everything Fagen's done since post-Nightfly to be totally unmemorable?

Yes -- until Everything Must Go. Back to boredom with Morph the Cat and another minor triumph with SC, on which I like about sixty percent of the tunes. When I heard "I'm Not the Same Without You" I knew he was awake again.

"Memorabilia" might be my favorite song on the record, both lyrically and musically. Great idea there: nuclear test memorabilia collectors. Referring to the tests by their nicknames like music connoisseurs. RUSTY old memorabilia.

"Weather in my head" sticks with me too. Steely Dan weren't particularly bluesy so this might be the best blues thing Fagen has ever been involved with.

And adding klezmer to the Isaac Hayes song = making it all about a Jewish ghetto; I'm a sucker for a good conceptual cover (plus there's a great little sample-worthy bit at the end of each chorus.)

this good