Two Against Nature

About

After reviving Steely Dan for a string of concerts in the mid-Nineties, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker officially ended their twenty-year hiatus in 2000, with the release of <i>Two Against Nature</i>. Unbelievably, Fagen and Becker have lost none of their taste or technical expertise. The album picks up exactly where <i>Gaucho</i> left off. The duo’s fusion of jazz, pop and rock is as precisely rendered and spotless as a figure of fine glassware. Even better, their lyrics have become more incisive with age. Rather than pursue a simple nostalgia trip, <i>Two Against Nature</i> follows a cast of characters, who, like Fagen and Becker, are reuniting and reexamining their former lives. The names alone are priceless: Bobby Dakine, Madame Erzulie, T-Bone Angie, Janie Runaway, and Anna de Siecle, to name a few. The album’s theme of love misplaced and inevitable loneliness is epitomized in “What A Shame About Me,” in which a former flame’s invitation to a hotel rendezvous is met by abdication: “I said babe you look delicious / And you're standing very close / But like this is lower Broadway / And you're talking to a ghost / Take a good look it's easy to see / What a shame about me.”

via Apple Music