Cosmic America

After the surprise live show reunion of the mid-1990s, it felt like only a matter of time before Steely Dan were reconstituted as a studio act. And while it would take until 2000 for that to actually come to fruition, the result ended up being...pretty good, all things considered! It's definitely a DIFFERENT Steely Dan from where we left them in 1980, but the fans who followed the roadmap of Becker & Fagen's solo and collective efforts over the next two decades had a clue of what to expect going in. What we hear on this album is a fun combination of sardonic lyricism, an almost giddy basking in dirty old man-dom, and some genuinely interesting bemusement that they're still speaking to audiences so directly 30 years into their careers. It's probably not your favorite Steely Dan album, but it's actually a really good Steely Dan album if you can get past the overly professional fusion/jazz sheen that is caked all over the instruments.