Steely Dan - Can't Buy A Thrill (1972)

"How about that," said Robert Christgau of Steely Dan's first album in 1972, "a good album with two hit singles attached."  Two years after the Beatles' breakup, and two or three years into a decade in which MOR schlock was the coin of the realm of AM hit radio, it was a natural reaction for Christgau to be amazed at Can't Buy a Thrill.  Even more incredible was that Steely Dan's debut fulfilled the promise of jazz/blues rock fusion in a pop context.  At the time, the group Chicago (as mentioned in my previous record review on this blog) sought that role, but while Chicago - a group of Chicagoans working in LA - sang cheerily about enjoying the Fourth of July, Can't Buy a Thrill - recorded by a band working in LA and led by New Yorkers Walter Becker and Donald Fagen - is anything but a Saturday in the park.

Can't Buy a Thrill takes the listener through all sorts of musical delights, with mournful brass, searing guitars, and pointed piano notes turning from heavy rock to bittersweet jazz. Though seemingly titled ironically - because it's a thrilling listen from the Latin jazz percussion of the opener "Do It Again" to the wind chimes in the coda of "Turn That Heartbeat Over Again," the closing cut - Can't Buy a Thrill is replete with characters unable to find satisfaction in much of anything. Singer David Palmer (gone after this first Dan album) offers a regretful vocal expressing the sentiments of the illicit lover of "Dirty Work," backed by Fagen's understated organ, while "Midnite Cruiser," with drummer Jim Hodder on lead vocals and backing by the brooding guitars of Jeff "Skunk" Baxter and Denny Dias, finds a street thug and his crony trying to replicate the old days. Most of the lead vocals belong to Donald Fagen, who would quickly become the sole voice of Steely Dan, and for good reason; from the lost wandering soul he gives voice to in "Fire In the Hole" to his brush-offs of suggestions of brotherhood in the Latin-tinged "Only a Fool Would Say That" (musing over a supposedly content middle class daydreaming about finding happiness elsewhere),  he offers up compelling interpretations of the lower orders of society trying to make sense of a rapidly changing but very vivid world.

It's an approach that Becker and Fagen would take throughout the Dan's existence in their songwriting, as I noted in my earlier review of Pretzel Logic, their 1974 masterpiece.  Can't Buy a Thrill, while not as perfect a record, is more varied in its music, throwing in an electric sitar and some steel guitar passages (among other things) that add a little bite that later Dan albums had a little too much polish for.  On the debut, the polish and grit is much more balanced against each other, and it shows in the two hit singles.  "Do It Again" is a myriad of kaleidoscopic sound that illuminates the tale of a loser drifting from one bad break to another but always coming back for more, while the clean sound of the rocker "Reelin' In the Years" offers up the raw, unvarnished soloing of guest guitarist Elliott Randall complementing Fagen's snide recitation of lyrics offering a kiss-off to an ex-girlfriend.  Many people thought they had Steely Dan figured out from this record - a tight fusion band that wouldn't bow to sentimentality.  The Dan were that, but it turned out that their twists and turns in the music and the irony and detachedness in the lyrics suggested more issues simmering beneath the surface.  In all the time we've known the songs on Can't Buy a Thrill, we're still not quite sure what they mean, even if we have an idea of what they're about.  And we're still intrigued.