Pronounced "Asia" apparently.
It’s interesting how widely variable music has become by the late Seventies. A genre beginning as “rock” can now give us anything from The Clash to this, Steely Dan taking their jazz/rock fusion to arguably its apogee.
I’ve discussed before how this is reminiscent of mixing all the Plasticene colours together and getting a dull brown, and quite often fusing jazz and rock can take away the exciting parts of both genres. But although this album is some of the easiest of easy listening for the most part, it also throws up some parts that make you sit up and take notice.
Donald Fagen and Co. have made the most polished of polished, the most produced of produced albums, but without the over-production of a Spector album; this is closer to the deftness of Bob Ezrin in making complex tracks crystal clear and absolute honey for the ears. And I say this even though for the most part the tracks kind of slid by me, and I have very little idea what the lyrics are about. Home At Last evokes Odysseus escaping the sirens with mentions of being tied to the mast. The track Josie has a good bluesy chorus that tells us that Josie “plays like a Roman with her eyes on fire”. Which I heard the first time as “with her arse on fire” and thought, ooh, they’re being a bit more daring than I gave them credit for.
But that said, there are some fun parts. The title track Aja, an 8-minute monster, has some great drum breaks from drummer Steve Gadd. And here’s another element where the Dan go balls-to-the-wall with production, with each track practically having its own set of personnel. Of the army of drummers employed on the album, only Bernard Purdie features on more than one track – Deacon Blues (surely the source of the band of almost the same name), and Home At Last. Timothy B Schmidt, of Poco and Eagles fame, crops up as backing vocals on a couple of tracks, and saxophonist Pete Christlieb appears on Deacon Blues.
The tracks are slightly more on the jazz end of things, allowing the cast of a billion musicians to solo and vibe a bit (but not *too* much), with a fun squeaky vibraphone solo on Home At Last (Victor Feldman), some nice piano phrasing to the fade out on I Got The News (Feldman again probably).
I wasn’t expecting to like this one very much, but it’s a grower, especially the tracks on the second side – Home At Last, I Got The News, and Josie.
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