What's good for The Dan is good for The Donald. Pun intended, because like the ubiquitous Mr. Trump, Donald Fagen is all about New York. His music is sleek, sophisticated, groove laden and international. The nightclubs, the models in their black dresses, the Lincoln Town cars, the fancy cocktails, even The Yankees all make appearances on his new album surrounded by that Steely Dan sound that can't be duplicated by anyone and that he probably could never change himself if he tried.
On his new solo cd “Morph The Cat” Fagen completes the third leg of his trilogy of solo albums and the themes work on a couple of levels. Where “The Nightfly” was about adolescence and the past and “Kamakiriad” concerned middle age and the future, “Morph The Cat” is inspired by issues of mortality and is set in the present day. It has only eight songs plus a reprise of the title cut but half, in fact the first four songs ("Morph The Cat", "H Gang", "It's What I Do"and "Brite Nitegown") are instant classics in the Steely Dan mode and the others are as good, if not better, than anything other solo recordings he's made.
If you've ever been stumped by the meaning of his lyrics (who hasn't?) Fagen even includes a brief interpretation of each song in the lyrics sheet. The title of the album is "a vast ghostly cat-thing (that) descends on New York City, bestowing on its citizens a kind of rapture." You'll hear about "the life and death of a band in a nutshell", "a conversation between myself and the ghost of Ray Charles" the meaning and origination of "the fellow in the bright nightgown" and "a sweet interlude at LaGuardia (with a) security babe" that has Fagen shouting before an instrumental break "Search me now!" New York has never sounded so good.
Listen for lots of tracks all week from "Morph The Cat" by Donald Fagen on Paul Shugrue's new music show, "Out of the Box" Monday through Thursday from 7pm to 9pm and Saturday from 1pm to 5pm on Public Radio 89.5 WHRV-FM.