Walter Becker - "Paging Audrey" (mp3)

I don't think I would've bothered to pick up Walter Becker's Circus Money if I didn't happen to be on a pretty big Steely Dan kick lately (although I don't think I even knew Becker had a new album out when I wrote that post). Through Becker and Donald Fagen are by all accounts a pretty equal partnership as far as the band's music and lyrics and go, Fagen is the voice of Steely Dan, so his solo albums are automatically a more palatable proposition, and I liked his Morph The Cat but by no means loved it. Since I haven't heard Becker's previous solo album, 1994's awesomely titled 11 Tracks Of Whack, my primary experiences with his singing voice were the somewhat unpleasant grumblings on Everything Must Go's "Slang Of Ages," and the rendition of Whack track "Book Of Liars" on the Dan's Alive In America.

So I was surprised by how immediately appealing Circus Money is. Turns out Becker's not a bad singer after all; he works that gruff tone with a nice amount of vibrato, and seems to share some of Fagen's ear for phrasing. He's actually probably more enjoyable to listen to now than Fagen, who's lost a lot of range and edge in his voice over the years. Like on Morph The Cat, the music is virtually indistinguishable from that of latter day Dan albums; it's not even noticeably less piano-driven for the lack of Fagen. But the grooves a just a little looser and heartier (love that booming floortom on "Somebody's Saturday Night"), with probably as little antiseptic smoothness as any Dan-related release since Gaucho, which was really when a kind of glassy film started to develop around their sound and came to define the band for a generation of whippersnappers who don't know better. Those Greek chorus backup singer girls are all over Circus Money, however. The lyrics sometimes feel a little too on the nose compared to Steely Dan; when you've got a song title like "Door Number Two" or "Three Picture Deal" or "Bob's Not Your Uncle Anymore," the lyrics kinda write themselves from there, or at least seem to as they hit the most predictable marks.

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