1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 507. Donald Fagen – The Nightfly (1982)

 

I didn’t think I’d heard of Donald Fagen, but, of course, he’s from Steely Dan. Which is immediately obvious once the music starts, as it’s the same kind of smooth lounge jazz-pop of Steely Dan; complex yet inoffensive. There’s no doom and gloom and darkness here. 

I.G.Y. was familiar, and I know I’ve heard this on the radio. It’s an optimistic track about the future with spandex jackets for everyone, where you can travel from New York to Paris by trans-Atlantic tunnel in ninety minutes, and “A just machine to make big decisions, programmed by fellows with compassion and vision”. Yeah. Didn’t *quite* work out like that. It’s possible that Fagan is being ironic, but it doesn’t feel that way; more like he is looking back at a time (in this case the International Geophysical Year of 1957-58) where optimism of the future still proposed a world like The Jetsons. 

Also familiar is the swing jazz of the closing track, Walk Between Raindrops, which is unbridled syncopated joy that reminded me of Matt Bianco. Maxine is some smooth jazz that reminded me a bit of Frank Zappa’s work on Joe’s Garage, except that with Zappa the lyrics wouldn’t have ended with a simple high-school romance but would have involved venereal disease and BDSM.  

The Nightfly is narrated by a late-night phone in DJ “with jazz and conversation”, hosting calls about “a race of men in the trees”, speaking of loneliness in both the DJ and his callers – another track about those still awake at night, going once again way back to the very first album on this list and Sinatra; it also recalls Harry Chapin’s “W.O.L.D.”. 

The thematic core of this album, I think, revolves around the futurism of I.G.Y., the isolation of The Nightfly, and the Monkey Island-like samba rhythms of The Goodbye Look, breezy, swinging, touching on all corners of the human condition. 

I ended up liking this more than I thought – previous observations on Steely Dan still hold, and I’m not sure what to make of much of it, but there are some tracks that sound like cheesy fun on top, but have a bit more to them underneath.