Geffen Vinyl & CDs

Review: Did Steely Dan go Bisto on us and save the best for last? Maybe, just maybe. While Pretzel Logic didn't mark the end of all things The Dan, it was the final album to feature the full lineup - Walter Becker, Donald Fagen, Denny Dias, Jim Hodder, and Jeff 'Skunk' Baxter (prior to the latter joining The Doobie Brothers). It was also the last to be released while the group were actively touring, and as such can be seen as something of a swan song. Perhaps Magnus Opus is a more appropriate turn of phrase. Critically acclaimed at the time, the record sees the jazz rockers opt to tone down the instrumentals that had cost them radio play with preceding LP, Countdown to Ecstasy, and instead focus on shorter, more direct and certainly catchier tunes. That's not to mean throwaway, mind, with praise lauded on the release at the time, when it was reissued in the late 1980s and remastered a decade or so later. Back again, it still has the same impact.