It's All About The Groove4 Out Of 5 Stars
"Sunken Condos" is Donald Fagen's look at getting older. He slyly refers to himself as a "burned out hippie clown" and as being "ready for Jurassic Park." If The Nightfly was his look at a nostalgic past, "Sunken Condos" is a look at how a grown-up loses the starry eyes and gets trapped in the "Memorabilia," calling them all "souvenirs of a perfect doom." If you think that the music should match all this, you'd be fooled, because like "The Nightfly," Fagen is at a relaxed and jazz-funk mood. For the 64 year old Fagen, this is a spry and loose album, filled with impeccable playing yet accessible songs.
Given my thoughts that "Morph The Cat" was inaccessibly complex for a pop-music album, the "Slinky Thing" that is this album is a delight. Fagen and his cohorts (special honors to guitarists Jon Herington and Kurt Rosenwinkle) lay down a funk groove like the best of Steely Dan's memorable songs, all while acknowledging that real musicians are playing these riffs and not some kid on a laptop (who seems to be the antagonist of "The New Breed," where Fagen loses the girl to a techno-whiz. Or he backtracks to the days of Prohibition as he becomes a mob-runner for "Good Stuff," making up people and places that harken back to the days of "Dr Wu" or "Gaucho."
Through it all, "Sunken Condos" doesn't lose the sly nods to his audience and old fans. This is most obvious on the odd cover of Isaac Hayes' "Out Of The Ghetto." Turning a piece of super-funk into the kind of mysterio-sheen that Becker and Fagen always did best, even it's got to be one of the oddest choices for a cover he could have made. Contrast it to "The Nightfly's" rework of Dion's "Ruby Baby" for the effect of being transported out of one zone and into Fagen's world. It's a world that can't be held into the compression of MP3's or pre-processed expectations. "Sunken Condos" is a return to form for Donald Fagen and is sure a welcome pool in a desert of whiz-kids and sine-waves passing for sophisticated music.
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