The Nightfly

Feels like Steely Dan is missing a little something.

Steely Dan

Why does this sound like if Bill Wurst made an album?

At first I thought I didn’t know who this was and then he started singing and I knew it was the Steely Dan guy. This sounds like a steely Dan album. Maybe a little more synth heavy but it’s got that Steely Dan sound. I’m not a huge Steely Dan guy so this was just ok to me.

Я дуже люблю стілі ден і багато їх слухав, але чомусь сольне Фагена пройшло повз мене взагалі.

Стилістично це схоже на стілі ден переіода gaucho, мабуть. Дуже класний джаз-поп, як вміють тільки вони (але у цьому випадку він один). Пишуть що до всієї позитивної атмосфери тут ще додається концепт і певна автобіографічність текстів. Коротше клас, що тут сказати.

Nice for yacht rock/easy listening. solid solo after Steely Dan and interesting that it was all digital!

I liked the opening track, but the rest was too smooth for me, though I appreciate the musicianship. A high two.

Pretty hit or miss, some songs I liked a lot, others not so much. Solid 3/5.

This is just another Steely Dan Record.

Should I know who this is? His wiki is pretty long-- oh, he was in STEELY DAN. The Wilco of the 80s. More dentist office music. Maybe a little too peppy for a surgery, though. Better than Steely Dan, and I don't think I would have connected them on my own, but I still don't love it.

The "International Geophysical Year" concept is pleasant to learn about, so kudos to this album for introducing me to that.

I appreciate that this is an 8 track album. I bet people nowadays think that's what an "8-track" was (not me though! I looked it up long ago!).

This is more of an I-didn't-dislike-it 3. A snoozer but not quite a loser.

Highlight: 'The Goodbye Look' (if it were in Japanese, maybe it could be in a Persona soundtrack. Man, I'm really invested in video game music apparently!)

I have a nagging feeling that this must be what Steely Dan sounds like to people who don’t like Steely Dan. It’s a bit too slick for its own good.

Not quite the same without Becker but it still has a lot of what makes Steely Dan great and that decadent late night vibe.

Steely dan, but more boring and less fun.

This still really feels like a Steely Dan album, despite being a solo work. I like this album, there are some fun hits here and no track is unpleasant to listen to. The album plays it a bit safe at times though, the divide between campy soft rock and Steely Dan is a bit thin.

Quite a long, synthy pop rock song to open the album with, but it wasn't super poppy, just a little poppy. Maxine had some great saxophone in it.

Yacht rock gets a bad rap in my view. This is expert musicianship, production and fun, all wrapped up with some interesting lyrics about fallout shelters, among other things.

Jazzy sound of that particular era, probably fueled a thousand early 80s dinner parties where people schmoozed, did cocaine, shared partners, and laughed about new fangled things like how do they set the clock on the VCR?

Nice upbeat and catchy album! Reminded me a bit of Billy Joel

Somehow knew 2 of these songs although the name doesn't ring a bell. Pleasant surprise!

4 ⭐️

The relatively low-key but long-lived popularity of The Nightfly led Robert J. Toth of The Wall Street Journal in 2008 to dub the album "one of pop music's sneakiest masterpieces." - Wiki

Masterpiece? Robert J. Toth has a favourite colour and it is beige.

There is nothing technically wrong here but this is soulless music and will be the first 1 I hand out.
1/5.

I figured I would start getting at least one album from Steely Dan on this list. I did not expect that their frontman and keyboardist, Donald Fagen, would also have a solo album on the list. During the group's short breakup in the early 1980s, Fagen pursued a solo career, taking advantage of new-at-the-time digital recording technology and multiple session musicians to carve his path separate from longtime collaborator Walter Becker.

The resulting album from those sessions was The Nightfly, a jazz-pop record that's autobiographical, inspired by Fagen's suburban childhood. Now, the shift in style doesn't seem that far removed from what Steely Dan were doing by the end of the previous decade, but it does sound pristine with the multiple instruments arranged and layered neatly through such bolstered production. I get why this album gets used for testing out recording studio equipment; it just sounds that good to begin with. Some personal highlights of mine include "New Frontier" with the shuffle beat led by Fagen's synthesizer play accompanied by the prominent cowbell, the cover of the Drifters' "Ruby Baby" with the busy sway with organ swell, and horn arrangements, and the electric piano swagger of "Green Flower Street".

Sure, this album could be approached from the perspective that the stakes are lower with the simpler subject matter in the lyrics and more laid-back arrangements that border on lounge music. But given the amount of intricate detail that can be found in the instrumental compositions, I'd say there's more to The Nightfly such that this album could grow on me. I consider this record a nice surprise to find.