Donald Fagen: The Nightfly

AHEM. WHERE were we? Steely Dan go out on the worst album of their entire career, Walter Becker gets involved in one of those stupidly seamy Hollywood jailbait-and-drug scandals that are the infallible identifying mark of the terminal arsehole, Donald Fagen bides his time and eventually comes up with The Nightfly, an album which doesn't so much dilute the arctic smartassery of the Dan as warm it up, loosen it up and present it in a new context: as the chosen style of a naïve, half-smart young man with fantasies of sophistication.