Steely Dan - 'Pretzel Logic' album review (2024)

It was time for Steely Dan to move on. And by “Steely Dan”, it was understood to mean Donald fa*gen and Walter Becker, the singer-songwriters who formed the band and led the creative charge. For their two previous albums, 1972’s Can’t Buy a Thrill and 1973’s Countdown to Ecstasy, fa*gen and Becker mainly stuck to their bandmates for instrumental contributions, with the occasional session guitarist or horn section stepping in to fill out the sound. But Steely Dan had been a true-blue band up to this point, something that neither fa*gen nor Becker were too concerned with.

At the same time, Steely Dan were establishing themselves as a mainstream juggernaut. The material that would appear on their third studio album Pretzel Logic would be the perfect nexus between pop accessibility and jazzy complexity. Leaps and bounds beyond the soft rock simplicity of Can’t Buy a Thrill but not yet reaching the dense complexity of Aja, Pretzel Logic takes just the right amount from both sides.

Nowhere is that more apparent than on the album’s opening track, ‘Rikki Don’t Lose That Number’. With perhaps the catchiest chorus in the entire Steely Dan canon, ‘Rikki Don’t Lose That Number’ borrows directly from Horace Silver’s ‘Song for My Father’ and incorporates an atypical chord progression. That all seems like typical Steely Dan, but other than Becker and fa*gen, the only other band member to contribute to the track was Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter, who put down the song’s guitar solo. ‘Rikki Don’t Lose That Number’ would be Steely Dan’s highest charting song, proving to Becker and fa*gen that their evolution was going in the right direction.

The funk-infused ‘Night By Night’ brings in a full array of horns and backing vocalists to further expand the band’s scope. The song leans a bit too heavily into a certain menace that the endearingly awkward members of Steely Dan could never really pull off. Donald fa*gen will never really embody a vagabond street dweller – he’s more of a college professor telling you about these things. The expanded band that plays on ‘Night By Night’ also features future Toto drummer Jeff Porcaro, who would replace original drummer Jim Hodder in 1974 before the band made permanent use of session players.

Somehow, fa*gen and Becker are able to pair a keen ear for pop melodies with strange literary references and casual slang successfully on ‘Any Major Dude Will Tell You’. ‘Barrytown’ has the name energy – a mix of seemingly simple pop rock with surprising lyrical turns about ignorance and adaptation.

That’s when Becker and fa*gen lay the jazz on thick. ‘East St. Louis Toodle-Oo’ is a Duke Ellington instrumental that Baxter fills out with wah-wah guitar that mimics the sounds of a muted trumpet. ‘Parker’s Band’ is a direct reference to Charlie Parker, with lyrics that invite the listener to join in on Parker’s jam sessions. The complexity of ‘Through the Buzz’ reaches almost cinematic levels, with tumbling string lines complimenting fa*gen’s delicate lead vocal line. Just as you wrap your head around the track, it’s done and over in less than two minutes.

The old-school romanticisation of minstrel shows on ‘Pretzel Logic’ might read as a bit strange, but the band’s love of vaudeville and pre-television entertainment is rooted in genuine admiration rather than anything unseemly. Not that Steely Dan ever shied away from unseemly topics: both ‘With a Gun’ and ‘Charlie Freak’ cover similar dark subject matter. The former brings a country rock shuffle to a tale about trading guns for drugs, while the latter scuttles along as fa*gen gets dealt a ring by a desperate drug addict who trades his final possession for a fatal fix.

It was only after the release of Pretzel Logic that the final nail in the “Steely Dan as a real band” coffin was hammered in. Exhausted and jaded from touring, Becker and fa*gen decided to make Steely Dan a studio-only outfit. The change caused Baxter to jump ship over to the Doobie Brothers while Hodder was already on the outs, having only sung backup on Pretzel Logic. Guitarist Denny Dias would continue to collaborate with the band, in a greatly reduced capacity, all the way to 1980’s Gaucho.

Pretzel Logic was the coming out party for Becker and fa*gen as their own self-sustained unit. Steely Dan was no longer beholden to any specific person – even Becker would sit out sessions that were better suited for other players. The identity of Steely Dan as boundary-pushing jazz nerds who could craft bitterly ironic and cutting lyrics, stomping rock and roll, and ear-pleasing pop was firmly established. It didn’t matter who was making the music since it was always going to be Steely Dan now that fa*gen and Becker had established full control.

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