TWO AGAINST NATURE

When this album was released in 2000 I couldn't believe it. SD had been stone dead for some 20 years. Although, stone dead, I remember having seen them live in 1995 in Rotterdam ! What's stuck in my memory is the huge reception they got from the audience (some 10.000 I guess) that was already going wild by seeing them in person. It's not that strange actually because SD didn't do much live. Certainly not in Europe and then surprisingly in 1995, it was more of a miracle. It had a great impact on me. And I'm sure mr. Fagen wasn't really at ease with the situation, I think he was overwhelmed doing all kind of strange things on the stage. But it was a great performance, an unforgettable experience.

Then 5 years later a new album. It became a success and a year later the ballot of the great hall of fame of music added SD quite rightly to this hall as a sort of making up for what should have happened 20 years earlier. Two against Nature is a very nice album but it's not a match for their three predecessors (Royal Scam, Aja and Gaucho). Those were three jewels that deserved the 4 stars completely. This one is at least half a grade less in quality but that is really still a very high level. The songs are more or less in the same style, still jazzy like back then but more like funky jazz than the former smooth jazz. And what's still there is the perfection. Sheer quality of production.

Another big plus for this album is that there are no fillers, which is almost the usual thing with Steely Dan because they also hardly did that in the seventies. But I have to say there are no true highlights either at least not to me. A very equable album that means and another headache case for the doubt between 3 and 4 stars. Because it's significantly less compared to the three mentioned albums I'm afraid I will have to round down (3,5*).

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