Pretzel Logic: Salty, Twisted Steely Dan

Come Meet the Squonk!

For a few decades, if you asked me what my favorite album was, I might have said, Pretzel Logic. This is Steely Dan that was born in its prime, stepping up into greatness. It lives in the past and the future at the same time, with two songs built from early Walter Becker and Donald Fagen songwriting demos. (They are: "Barrytown" and "Parker's Band").

There are foreshadowings of the elegant 1977 jazz mutant megaseller Aja, which more casual and uninformed listeners perceived as "smooth jazz," an understandable error made possible by such an obsession with audio perfection that Aja might have been recorded in a plush android warehouse. ("Android Warehouse" is the name of one of the early Becker-Fagen demo songs and the title of one of those off-label collections.)

Short (34 minutes), song-focused yet with some room to riff and solo, there are no false moves on Pretzel Logic. And what would Pretzel Logic mean? I've always thought: salty but twisted, like Steely Dan itself.  

It is not a jaz…