Released - July 1973
Genre - Jazz Rock
Producer - Gary Katz
Selected Personnel - Donald Fagen (Piano/Keyboards/Vocals); Walter Becker (Bass/Harmonica); Denny Dias (Guitar); Jeff "Skunk" Baxter (Guitar/Pedal Steel Guitar); Rick Derringer (Slide Guitar); Jim Hodder (Drums/Percussion)
Standout Track - My Old School
I came to Steely Dan's sophomore album Countdown To Ecstasy after already becoming familiar with the two records that are perhaps to this day regarded as their best, debut Can't Buy A Thrill and their third album Pretzel Logic (1977's Aja is a good contender for the top spot too, both personally and by global consensus, but for my money it doesn't quite beat those two). As such, it was inevitable that I would end up being slightly disappointed with it. Generally, if I feel I'm likely to be interested in listening to an artist's whole discography then I always try to listen to it more or less chronologically rather than starting with the most critically adored records before moving onto the "lesser" ones as it sets up an inevitable downward trajectory for your enjoyment. For a long time, I felt that Countdown To Ecstasy was just more of the same hip, precisely engineered jazz-inflected pop rock but without any of the brilliant, catchy tunes that elevated the two albums I already knew. But it's one of those records that requires a little patience, a little digging to find that there are real virtues to be found beneath its lack of a standout tune (besides the immensely catchy "My Old School," which is easily the most memorable and enjoyable melody on offer).
It's an interesting album in a couple of ways in terms of the band's broader history. As I discussed in my review of Can't Buy A Thrill, Steely Dan were a curious outfit in that they were effectively a musical duo masquerading as a band. In 1973, this legacy would not yet have quite taken hold, although the signs of it were already there. Already lead songwriters and band leaders Walter Becker and Donald Fagen's penchant for drafting in hosts of session players to flesh out the performances of the key band was in evidence, but on Countdown To Ecstasy, unlike any other album they would produce together, they were uniquely writing for a live band. In the wake of the success of Can't Buy A Thrill, Steely Dan had undertaken a series of tours, despite Becker and Fagen's lack of interest in live performance. As such, the songs featured on their second album are the only Steely Dan songs to have been written specifically with the live element in mind. It doesn't have a huge impact on the music, but, as the shorter track listing will testify, the songs here do place much greater emphasis on instrumental interludes, jazz-influenced soloing and extended jams than they did previously, all ideas which the band could really play with in a live environment.
The most obvious songs to have been sculpted with this in mind are the great opener "Bodhisattva," "Your Gold Teeth" and "Show Biz Kids." "Bodhisattva" is perhaps the jazziest song the band had written so far, where the shuffling, bop-style drum part is the backdrop for a series of intertwining, tangled guitar solos from Denny Dias and Jeff "Skunk" Baxter. Whereas "Bodhisattva" is basically just a song framed around a number of instrumental explorations, "Your Gold Teeth" is far more structured, but still features several prominent instrumental sections favouring improvisation. "Show Biz Kids," meanwhile, is an effortlessly cool blues vamp on a single chord, with the repeated choral chants of "They've blown a life's wages" anchoring Fagen's biting character assassination of materialistic, commercially minded social strata, and a slide guitar solo by Rick Derringer becomes ever more frantic and tortuous.
I also mentioned in my last Steely Dan review how refreshing it is that Becker and Fagen tend to write material far less overly reliant on the guitar than most other contemporary rock bands. In stark contrast to the use of the instrument on Can't Buy A Thrill, here they put it front and centre, with the solos in "Bodhisattva," "Your Gold Teeth" and "Show Biz Kids" being particularly prominent, but then there's the final section of "The Boston Rag" as well. For most of its length, "The Boston Rag" is a slow, almost plodding affair, but then in its closing minutes things are stripped back to a simple piano chord sequence, over which perhaps the most fearsome, angry guitar solo in Steely Dan's discography is unleashed.
It's not all jazzy instrumentals and solos, though - while there aren't many instantly memorable pop tunes here, things never disappear into true jazz fusion improvised jam territory, and is always kept tied to a simple, radio-friendly song structure, nowhere more so than on the simply joyous "My Old School," whose jazzy piano and jubilant horn section makes it one of the band's most enjoyable numbers (and, yes, there are some brilliant moments of guitar magic in there once again). The final two songs see a dip in quality as both the pop hooks and the exhilerating solos are abandoned in favour of a couple of fairly forgettable pop songs of the quality of some of the more middling material on Can't Buy A Thrill.
Lyrically, Becker and Fagen continue their wry, counter-cultural preoccupations from their first album. The focus, by and large, is on materialism, with pretty much every song finding a fresh way to skewer a society obsessed with purchasing power - from the cynical dismissal of the material possessions of the "Show Biz Kids," to the idea of whether LA razor boys have any principles or opinions beyond their own belongings. "Bodhisattva" explores the idea of west coast excess in the context of Eastern mysticism, an idea which the album's title picks up on as well, articulating the idea of trying to rationalise and apply rules to a spiritual concept. Essentially, Becker and Fagen continue to draw on the literary legacy of the beat poets like William S. Burroughs who first inspired the band's name, giving character sketches of decadent low-lives through music that is deceptively upbeat, catchy and cheerful for all its tales of bleak hopelessness and pathetic materialism.
It's worth noting also that Countdown To Ecstasy is the first Steely Dan album to feature Fagen performing all lead vocal duties himself. Despite his shyness about singing live, Becker and producer Gary Katz pushed him to take over full vocal duties as his voice had so much more character than co-lead-vocalist David Palmer. While Fagen's voice is an acquired taste, it's a great improvement to have him as the sole voice on the record. Palmer's clean, too-perfect voice comes nowhere near the kind of snarl and cynicism and tongue-in-cheek snideness to properly tell the stories Becker and Fagen have set down. Still, Fagen's adoption of the full-time lead vocalist role was one more step on the road towards abandoning live performance, as it gave them yet another reason to avoid touring.
Countdown To Ecstasy has become critically well-thought-of but failed to secure any big hits or great success for Steely Dan at the time, but with a little patience its excellence soon reveals itself. It's an album that has pointedly chosen to avoid, for the most part, any attempt to write a hit pop song and to push some more unusual jazz stylings to the forefront, and it achieves some great things in places as a result of its more idiosyncratic streak. Soon after its release, Becker and Fagen would take the executive decision to not tour any more so that they could put even more focus and care and precision into the crafting of their studio recordings, and before long Steely Dan would cease functioning as a real band at all, rather becoming a musical pallette for the two of them to continue fine-tuning the jazz-rock soundscapes in their minds. The following year's Pretzel Logic would see them continue to push jazz styles forward while also writing more concise pop songs to make an album that perhaps came closest to achieving a fusion of the two styles they excelled at.
Track Listing:
All songs written by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen.
1. Bodhisattva
2. Razor Boy
3. The Boston Rag
4. Your Gold Teeth
5. Show Biz Kids
6. My Old School
7. Pearl Of The Quarter
8. King Of The World
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