Considered by many to
be the bands magnum opus, Steely Dan’s Aja
was recorded over a seven month period in 1977 in what was an example of
obsessive perfectionism on the part of band leaders Donald Fagen and Walter
Becker. The recording sessions for this album not only took forever, but also
had a cast of millions and in total involved a staggering thirty session
musicians including six backing vocalists, five keyboard/piano players, six
guitarists, a whopping ten horn players and seven drummers. With this the case
there can be no doubt that Fagen and Becker were going for studio efficiency and
perfection over everything else on this album as they sought a heavily sophisticated
jazz rock sound. Fagen and Becker (the only remaining original members) had already
been heading in this direction and seemingly had been preparing to make this
album for a few years. They had already relieved the other original band members
of their duties in 1974 in favour of studio musicians, whilst also turning the
band into a studio only act in 1975 when they decided to stop touring. The result
of these decisions manifested itself in the recording and subsequent release of
this album, with the results being definitely worthwhile to the listener at
least.
As I have already
mentioned, Aja has a slick jazz rock
sound to it or what I like to describe as cocktail jazz. The reason being is that
when I listen to this album the music ridiculously produces images of me
sipping cocktails in a New York bar in downtown Manhattan; the music definitely
has that nightclub feel to it. Musically, the sound of this album is sexy with
amazing sax solos and horn harmonies; it is jazzy with a rhythm section of
drums and bass holding down the backbeat, whilst the keyboard and piano playing
is smooth in nature with little melodic runs and jazzy sequences. Throughout there
is a strong emphasis placed on structure, harmony and carefully placed solos
whether they are keyboard, guitar, or horn. Careful attention is also given to
the sound of each instrument, with the final mix ensuring that all instruments
are heard clearly with no one instrument getting more scope than the other. This
slickness and careful construction of the instrumental backing is due to the
quality of the session musicians, many of whom were the best in the business in
terms of playing jazz and would have clocked up many hours of studio time
themselves playing on many records during the period.
The songs on Aja are highly textured and include
multiple layers of instruments resulting in quite a sonic sound and a very warm
feel. In terms of structure the songs are quite like classical pieces in that
they have different parts and sections with an example being the title track Aja that starts with the main motif of
the song then has a middle free form jazz section, before moving back to the
motif and finally finishing with another jazz flourish. With this amount of
attention placed on song structure and jazz arrangements you get the feeling it
would have taken hours and hours to get these songs right, with multiple takes probably
being the order of the day during the recording sessions. Multi-tracking would
also have been significantly important considering the complexity of some of the
songs and without it the dense layering of the instrumentation would have been
very hard to produce on record. Meanwhile lyrically the subject matter of the
songs is classic Steely Dan, very eccentric, witty and often sarcastic in tone
and content, whilst by no means pretentious or serious in any way. These guys didn’t
really write love songs, instead they wrote songs that were highly narrative usually
about New York and Los Angeles where the band was based, that included
fictional and often real characters with interesting lyrical constructions of
great depth to the point that they sometimes even confused the listener. What results
in is an interesting and sometimes entertaining listen even if you can’t quite
work what they are singing about.
Aja was a great success for the band
both critically and commercially. It went on to become the groups bestselling
album, and was ranked 145 in Rolling
Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. As an album
it was definitely more slickly produced than much of their previous work and it
seems Fagen and Becker were going all out for absolute perfection in the
studio, but this didn’t matter as the songs themselves were fantastic sounding
and some of the bands best. There can be no doubt that Aja is one of the Dan’s best albums and if not their most complete
sounding work. It is a must listen for jazz rock fans as well as those into
classic 70s rock. A
- Sam
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