10 Sophomore Slump Albums By Amazing Bands

When yacht rock was first starting to come into its own, Steely Dan were the kind of studio perfectionists that were never going to be truly satisfied. As much as Can’t Buy a Thrill may have put them on an even keel with the rest of the rock scene, songs like Do it Again and Reelin in the Years were far more musically accomplished than what we were getting out of the other Led Zeppelin knockoffs around the same time. There was a lot more pressure on the next record though, and Countdown to Ecstasy really suffers from just being musically undercooked.

Compared to the rest of the band’s catalog, there’s a much more slapdash delivery to this record, with the tones not always being dialed in fully and sounding like they're just throwing different ideas at the wall to see what sticks. It’s easy to forgive some of the production issues in the beginning of a band’s career, but considering this is the band that would become a studio band on records like Aja, hearing them this disheveled feels very strange.

There are still some great songs on here to be sure, from the goofiness behind the track My Old School and actually getting the lead out on the opener Bodhisattva, which has some of the wildest electric guitar and organ trade offs that the decade would ever see. Steely Dan hadn’t really lost any of their chops in the transition to the next record, but you can tell that this was still a band in its infancy, waiting to become a giant.