The Very Best of Steely Dan Steely Dan Artist

Putting together a best-of compilation for a band as hell-bent on achieving perfection as {|Steely Dan|} can be a daunting task. Fortunately, {|The Very Best of Steely Dan|} takes a kitchen-sink approach as it delivers two discs of remarkably precise... Read more

Putting together a best-of compilation for a band as hell-bent on achieving perfection as {|Steely Dan|} can be a daunting task. Fortunately, {|The Very Best of Steely Dan|} takes a kitchen-sink approach as it delivers two discs of remarkably precise jazz-rock from the storied outfit. A career retrospective, the album tracks {|Steely Dan|} from their more group-oriented beginning, which found legendary guitarist {|Jeff Skunk Baxter|} in the lineup, to their more withdrawn period in the second half of their career when {|Becker|} and {|Fagen|} focused on the perfectionism allowed by the studio environment. This helps to give listeners a taste of the band's complete history all in one shot rather than over the course of a couple of volumes. In the end, {|The Very Best of Steely Dan|} is like the closing arguments of two attorneys who are both arguing their client is innocent, just for different reasons, with both of its two discs making a compelling case for why {|Steely Dan|} were one of the great soft/jazz-rock bands of the '70s. ~ Gregory Heaney Less