The best compliment you can give an author is when you are finished reading his insights, a subject you thought you knew is so thoroughly taken apart and built anew, you cannot view (or in this case hear) it the same way again. This is what I offer Alex Pappademas for his delightfully wicked stroll through the songs and themes of Steely Dan. And there are many and they are varied, but all are nefarious to horrid with nary an innocent to be found. Adorned with provocative illustrations from artist Joan Lemay, Donald Fagan and Walter Becker’s twisted tales of the demimonde from Manhattan Island to the shining avenues of Los Angeles, are deconstructed with the proper and warranted wit and vigor the songs reveal.
I specifically enjoyed how Pappademas found threads to the song themes throughout the Steely Dan catalog and pieced together a running narrative of the 1970s on both coasts and the revelations of the personal lives and travails of both Fagan and Becker brimming (if not sometimes cleverly hidden) in their songs. It also prompted me to appreciate their later 90s work that I had mostly ignored. Not only a fine compendium for lifelong fans of the band, Quantum Criminals is an excellent primer for those discovering their complicated and eminently entertaining oeuvre – both musically and lyrically.
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