Steely Dan – Everything Must Go

Fantastic pressing. Tip-on jacket is superb. It’s the whole package! AP scores another winner.

New 45 rpm version coming along with Two Against Nature :
https://store.acousticsounds.com/d/162282/Steely_Dan-Everything_Must_Go-45_RPM_Vinyl_Record
https://store.acousticsounds.com/d/162280/Steely_Dan-Two_Against_Nature-45_RPM_Vinyl_Record

This album does sound fantastic and yet some of us are experiencing problems with this pressing. While I managed to avoid the skips there is quite a bit of noise in between tracks which really breaks up the flow of this excellently mastered album.

I'm with experiment _in_vinyl , who do we regarding this issue?

Where is the QC for these "exclusive" releases?

I received my copy today. The first track on both sides skips aggressively (more than 8 skips on "The Last Mall" and "Green Book") Because of this, the album is unlistenable. It's a shame because the tracks that don't skip sound fantastic.

Who should I about this terrible manufacturing defect?

It’s difficult to sincerely consider any of Steely Dan’s latter albums as mere come-back releases, it’s more that they’d worked themselves out of a variety of personal corners from which only time could free their souls and allow them to continue doing what they do best. Everything Must Go reflects this notion amazingly well, where we find our two lyrically and musically malevolent midnight cruisers waiting on a light at the corner of Magnolia Boulevard, where they’ll turn west onto Sunset, headed toward the sea.

Backed by a solid session band, Becker and Fagen take an odd sideways journey, delivering an incisive tightly woven album laced with the smooth intoxication of their newer material, yet delivering it with a nod to those early heady releases that caused a new page to be added to the book of rock n’ roll genres. With that being said, the most exciting aspect of Everything Must Go is that it feels so natural, so off handed, as if they’d made peace with Aja and Gaucho, along with Fagen’s autobiographical and thematic adventures, finding a place to stand that’s breezy wasted and laid-back, yet with a singular musical intensity of perfection that seems to flow with the personification of ease, rather than seeming labored and overly contemplated.

Fagen and Becker have shuffled and reshuffled the deck so often over the years that one can only wonder how many cards are missing, or which they’ve chosen to spirit away into their respective vests. Yes, they’ve lined their songs with hidden messages, winks at exclusionary hips, hip notions, and a few well placed daggers … delivering an unrelenting existential jazz infused bit of cleverness and subversiveness that delights even themselves; leaving plenty of breadcrumbs for longtime precocious listeners to string together.

Many of the songs found here are looser and more blues based, yet all rely on an infectious groove that continually inches forward, virtually carrying the listener through this series of happenings, and it’s all held in check by a funky intuitive backbeat that for all the world feels as if it has settle over the recording studio, demanding its presence to be recognized. Technically the album is perfect. Yet in that perfection Steely Dan have managed to recapture those listeners who were put off by the smooth jazz of their later material, allowing them to feel welcome again, as it feels that both Becker and Fagen have at long last decided who they want to be and where they need to be to finally sound effortlessly comfortable, ready to make a name for themselves again, embracing a new generation who will find themselves unable not to give themselves over to the habitual intoxication known as Steely Dan.

*** The Fun Facts: For the recording of Everything Must Go, a phrase derived from the description of 'Blow Out Sales' stores, Fagen and Becker returned to analog tape and a live band recording session. Why the step away from digital? Donald Fagen insists that working with digital sound exclusively has loosened all of the fillings of his teeth, requiring extensive work, nevertheless, there was digital tape and digital dubbing used. Walter Becker in his Hawaii studio, Hyperbolic Sound, had a hand in developing the Ktistec Machine, a device for enhancing and changing distances.

The song "Godwhacker" was developed from a lyric Fagen wrote a few days after his mother died of Alzheimer's. "It's about an elite squad of assassins whose sole assignment is to find a way into heaven and take out God", he later explained. "If the Deity actually existed, what sane person wouldn't consider this to be justifiable homicide?”

Review by Jenell Kesler

This album also exists as a vinyl LP. I own a copy. It is Reprise Records, cat. # 9326-48435-1. Non-gatefold sleeve, plain white inner sleeve, with insert/lyric sheet, printed on 2 sides: lyrics on 1 side, large photo and credits on the other. Bar code # 0 9362-48435-1 1. Made in . Copy-write 2003.