CAN'T BUY A THRILL

This is where it began for these über-New Yorkers transplanted to LA. Steely Dan had not yet evolved into their signature sound and lyric style; in much of this album they sound like a conventional albeit quirky 1970s rock band and they are very much a band here in contrast to the experimental Donald Fagen/Walter Becker studio project they would soon become. But as a band, perhaps the most endearing characteristic of this album is the many memorable instrumental breaks: on guitar in "Midnight Cruiser," "Change of the Guard" and "Reelin in the years," on saxophone in "Dirty Work," on piano in "Fire in the Hole," and on sitar and organ over the exaggerated bossa nova rhythm of "Do It again." (They also employ a bossa nova rhythm for "Only a Fool Would Say That," a hint of their more explicit jazz tributes in albums to come.) And while it is doubtful that anyone regards Fagen as a great singer, as reluctant frontman his voice fits the temperament much better than the polished vocals of David Palmer (who sang lead on two songs but left prior to the album's completion).

On this recording, Fagen and Becker already employ the Beat-reminiscent wit, cynicism and snark for which Steely Dan became famous (one might call them the Woody Allens of rock), but at various degrees, and it is perhaps here that the listener can distinguish earlier songs from later. While "Change of the Guard" is template 1960s idealism, "Only a Fool Would say That" mercilessly ridicules such optimism, and one could plausibly make the point that Steely Dan's next few years were, among other things, a repudiation of flower power and utopian idealism. Rather than outrightly denounce Richard Nixon, "Kings" slyly pillories him in what sounds like a pub drinking song (and if they thought McGovern would win the presidency, they wisely omitted any reference to "good King George"). And while "Reelin' in the Years" (a poor man's "Like a Rolling Stone" with a dash of "Positively 4th Street"), "Dirty Work," and "Midnight Cruiser" are mainstream rock without Steely Dan peculiarities, the final song, "Turn That Heartbeat," with its musical and lyrical twists and turns, points the way to Steely Dan's experimental future.

Can't Buy a Thrill is at once the best and most iconic in the Steely Dan Pantheon, an intriguing piece of work whose flaws and internal contradictions make it that much more endearing. Never again would they record anything so close to a straightforward rock album, especially one so patchy in content and rough in production, and not until 1977's Aja would they again release an album so commercially accessible. If this were Steely Dan's only album, it would remain a popular curiosity in the classic rock canon, but as history would have it, it simply pointed the way to the signature creativity, unpredictability and wit that made their mid-1970s albums masterpieces. 4.5 great first effort would make them become one of my favorite bands.

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