10 Perfect Rock Albums For Production

When you really break down what they do, it’s hard to claim that Steely Dan really rocks any harder than any other rock and roll act out there. These guys have pretty much co-opted the dad rock aesthetic years before it became a thing, having the sounds that make you feel like you’re on some expensive yacht in the Virgin Islands in a tacky Hawaiian shirt. It’s easy to talk trash on their credibility, and another thing entirely to actually listen to the mix that we got on Aja.

Going through almost every single track, Walter Becker and Donald Fagen almost feel like studio lab rats than musicians, using the Steely Dan name more as an aesthetic than anything else. Though Fagen’s voice appears on every single one of these songs, the session musicians are almost looked at like sonic colors being used for their songs, like when they bring in Larry Carlton for some jazz guitar on Black Cow or Steve Gadd delivering a clinic on how to write an amazing drum solo on the title track.

This wasn’t just being in the right place at the right time either, as they worked with Gary Katz day in and day out to make the meticulous corrections when they needed, taking almost an entire day to lay down the solo on Peg. Even though this might still sound like dad rock today, this is the kind of wonderland that most audiophiles dream of whenever they put on their headphones. The ‘70s may have been a time of excess, but Steely Dan were already ahead of the game in terms of what you could do in the studio.