Gaucho

The popular vinyl series of Steely Dan reissues continues with the 1980 masterpiece "Gaucho", their last album before a lengthy 20-year album hiatus. The album also marked the end of a number of truly unrivalled years in music with classic album after classic album from one of the most exquisite sounding bands in music history. Like all vinyl reissues in the series, the album has been remastered by Bernie Grundman from an analogue tape copy.

Aja was cool, relaxed, and controlled; it sounded deceptively easy. Its follow-up, Gaucho, while sonically similar, is its polar opposite: a precise and studied record, where all of the seams show. Gaucho essentially replicates the smooth jazz-pop of Aja, but with none of that record's dark, seductive romance or elegant aura. Instead, it's meticulous and exacting; each performance has been rehearsed so many times that it no longer has any emotional resonance. Furthermore, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen's songs are generally labored, only occasionally reaching their past heights, like on the suave "Babylon Sisters," "Time Out of Mind," and "Hey Nineteen." Still, those three songs are barely enough to make the remainder of the album's glossy, meandering fusion worthwhile.