Arcane Odyssey

By Guy Garcia

PERFORMER: DONALD FAGEN

ALBUM: KAMAKIRIAD

LABEL: WARNER

THE BOTTOM LINE: On his first album in 11 years, Fagen revives his muse -- and the quirky ghost of Steely Dan.

Back in the synthetic '70s, when disco and watered-down rock ruled the radio, a band called Steely Dan was making some of the most elegantly offbeat, wickedly incisive music ever to sneak onto the pop charts. Hits like Reeling in the Years and Rikki Don't Lose That Number were only the tip of the creative iceberg; beneath the taut tempos, cryptic lyrics and refreshingly unfamiliar melodies lurked an arcane, darkly sardonic intelligence summed up by the group's name, which was inspired by the moniker for a sexual appliance in William Burroughs' Naked Lunch.

Never a band per se, Steely Dan was actually a constellation of crack musicians that revolved around the core of Walter Becker, who played guitar and bass, and Donald Fagen, whose keyboards and reedy, world-weary vocals helped give Steely Dan its inimitable sound. The duo reached a stylistic apotheosis with the 1977 album Aja, a seamless amalgam of rock and jazz idioms that spawned the single Peg. Three years later, Becker and Fagen joined forces one last time for Gaucho, before, in Fagen's words, reaching "a dead end."

The parting was amicable: Becker went off to produce a series of jazz records and Rickie Lee Jones' Flying Cowboys album; Fagen released 1982's The Nightfly, a consummately crafted solo effort that echoed with the bebop percolations of his East Coast adolescence. Then came an 11-year hiatus, which Fagen attributes to a serious bout of writer's block. "I was kind of depressed at the time," he explains. "And it took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do."

Kamakiriad is worth the wait. Produced by Becker, who also pitches in on bass and solo guitar, the album picks up where Gaucho and The Nightfly left off and goes one step further, meshing Fagen's urbanely elliptic lyrics with the sonic sass and snap of Steely Dan. The faithful will be glad to know that Becker and Fagen are already writing songs together for a new album, and plans are under way for a Steely Dan tour this summer. Meanwhile, Kamakiriad continues the Steely Dan legacy while deftly sidestepping the quicksand of nostalgia.

From the streamlined funk of Tomorrow's Girls to the bouncy saunter of Countermoon, the songs find a groove and gather momentum as breezy vocals and serpentine horn charts glide over a swinging rhythm section. Trans-Island Skyway builds from a muttering bass line and ice-cool finger snaps to an exhilarating joyride that derives part of its thrill from the danger lurking around the next bend. When Fagen sings, "Strap in tight cause it's a long sweet ride," it's like speeding in a convertible with the top down.

Kamakiriad is described by Fagen as an allegorical journey set in the near future where "the narrator, instead of having a winged horse, has an environmentally correct car called a Kamakiri, which in Japanese means preying mantis." Typically, there are other, unspoken, allusions. Kamikaze for one -- the headlong, heedless plunge into a blaze of glory. But in this case Fagen's muse has emerged Phoenix-like from the ashes to resurrect the spirit of a brilliantly quirky collaboration.