plorentz's Full Review: Morph the Cat by Donald Fagen
Back when I was growing up in the 80s, it was pretty well beaten into my head that, in fact, the music of the 60s was and would always be far more vital and important than the music of my (or any other) era. I blame Oliver Stone for that. And Francis Ford Coppola. And Stephen King. And Bobbie Ann Mason. And whoever it was that produced The Wonder Years. And those commercials for "Freedom Rock." Between the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War, the songs of the 1960s - so the meme goes - were imbued with so much political fire, passion and integrity that anything released after, say, 1971, was, by comparison, mere fluffy amusement.
Never mind the fact that even the fluffiest, most apparently apolitical stuff of my childhood - Duran Duran's "Is There Something I Should Know?", for instance, or the Pointer Sisters' "Automatic" - often reflected a weird love/hate thing with the Orwellian possibilities posed by the ascendant information technology and spoke to very real anxieties about the Cold War and nuclear proliferation. Of course, none of that may have been obvious at the time - and certainly, all the make-up and shiny clothes and cloak-and-dagger videos probably only hurt the case for the "new" music. But taken collectively, in hindsight, the music of the 80s seems just as important and vital and historically significant as the music of the Vietnam Era. And I'm not just saying that because I love it.
Or maybe I am.
At any rate, 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, not to mention the feverish embrace of nationalism and gratuitous public displays of religion by political leaders, may be the most obvious political touchstones for pop music since Vietnam. And in the last few years, I've been consciously trying to assess just what people will think of our Terror War music twenty years from now, when the Bush Administration will be little more than a chapter in our kids' history classes. And quite contrary to the music of either the 60s or the 80s, the great big pop radio face of the current era has been as fiercely nationalistic, gratingly sentimental, and gung-ho for guns and ass-kicking as the 2004 Republican National Convention. Either that, or blissfully oblivious, content in their shopping sprees and mounting credit card debt.
That's not to say that there haven't been protest songs. But, most often, they've come from artists - like R.E.M. - teetering at the edge of relevance, and quite easy to ignore. Put frankly, the Oliver Stones of the 2020's are more likely to place U2's "Vertigo" and Tim McGraw's "Live Like You Were Dying" on the soundtracks to their Iraq movies, while R.E.M.'s "The Final Straw" (which I love, by the way) languishes (with Douglas Feith) in obscurity.
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There's been an impressive dearth of skepticism among our pop stars regarding the times we're living in. But all is not lost. Maybe where R.E.M. and their ilk have been going wrong is by calling out their grievances so directly and earnestly. Directness and candor are admirable qualities, to be sure, but perhaps too easily misunderstood (especially in the context of a pop song) as giving aid and comfort to the enemy, or, worse, trashing the- troops, by folks who are too busy watching The Swan on Fox to engage themselves in current events beyond polarizing bumper sticker slogans. Lyrically speaking, Duran Duran's "Is There Something I Should Know?" wasn't about the Cold War, but with its urgent, paranoid vibe and lines like "you're about as easy as a nuclear war", it may as well have been. Likewise, "Live Like You Were Dying", at least on the CD lyric sheet, has nothing to do with Iraq. But, in spirit, that's all it's about.
Which leads me (finally) to Donald Fagen and his recently released third solo album Morph the Cat, which is, in essence, the former Steely Dan frontman's 9-11/War on Terror record. But, as we've come to expect, Fagen spends very little time preaching the anti-war gospel or berating the Bush Administration, rather concentrating his efforts on crafting funky, distinctly urban jazz grooves (the kind envied by many a hip-hop producer), harmonies as thick and white and sticky as - ummm- sweetened condensed milk (yeah, that's the ticket), and the kind of literate, darkly clever verses that set the hearts and minds of library book shelvers and indie film aficionados all a-twitter.
With the slickness of their sound, and their religious emphasis on musicianship, studiocraft and professionalism, one would have been hard pressed to call anything by Steely Dan "personal." But Morph the Cat, despite its impeccable musicianship, its careful studiocraft, and its old-school professionalism, strikes me as a very personal statement (even more so than Fagen's more obviously autobiographical solo debut The Nightfly) - one that speaks, with style, intelligence, and a wicked sense of humor, to feelings of loss, fear, mortality, and the religion of nationalism - all in the context of 9/11 and the War on Terror, and all without actually directly invoking 9/11 or the War on Terror. Lyrically, it may be Donald Fagen's best, most complex and most moving work to date.
But, quite unfortunately, he stretches his grooves - like tighty-whitey elastic waistbands - far beyond the point at which they'll snap back into place. Like America itself, Morph the Cat suffers from an epidemic of obesity - the bloated six-and-seven-minute songs that form its mid-section are more fat than phat, more spare tire than rock n' roll. Songs like "The Great Pagoda of Funn" and his confrontation with W.C. Fields' vision of death in "Brite Nitegown" either sag under their own weight (the former) or fall into tiresome ruts (the latter) that cause our minds to wander and make us forget we're actually listening to music.
But, at its best, Morph the Cat is supple and well-dressed and jazzier-than-thou in the best possible way. The title track, which bookends the album, is the record's obvious masterpiece. Over the best damn bassline since the Barney Miller theme, Fagen, like a 21st Century Linus eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Great Pumpkin, describes a ghostly cat figure who soars through the air over Manhattan bringing joy and peace to all ("like Christmas without the chintzy stuff"). It's no coincidence, of course, that Morph (short for Morpheus?) flies the same friendly skies as Mohammed Atta, nor that he appears to have the same intoxicating effect on his constituents as a spontaneous gathering of Congresspeople singing "God Bless America" on the Capitol steps. The song reminds me of a captionless cartoon I saw in the fall of 2001 depicting a little girl holding the hand of her mother, pointing excitedly to the sky as the shadow of an airplane passed over her. There's a sense of childlike expectation and delight to it that, in the final verse which closes the album, shifts to skepticism and caution and a growing sense of doom.
It's hard to match the title track for sheer complex appeal, but Fagen comes close at several points throughout the record. The lead single "H Gang" is standard Steely Dan fare that's nevertheless a joy to hear. Even more fun is "Security Joan", a sly tale of love at first search in which Fagen confesses his infatuation with an airport security checker; and when he urges her to confiscate his shoes and his cell phone - Honey, you know I ain't no terrorist - a Department of Homeland Security Orange Alert never sounded sexier.
Setting its one major flaw aside, nothing here is tragic or bad - just a little overlong - and fans of Steely Dan hardly need to be convinced to buy a new Donald Fagen record. And when they do buy Morph the Cat, they will certainly not be disappointed. But the album should also appeal to people who don't know Donald Fagen's previous work so well, if only because it's so "now" and topical in its own stylishly unobvious ways. For a guy pushing 60, Fagen has crafted one of the hippest records out there right now and anyone with half a brain, half a heart, and a sweet spot for Jon Stewart will likely fall in love, if not with the whole record, at least with enough of it to make the $15-20 hole in their wallet not hurt so much.
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BECAUSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:
"Morph the Cat" by Donald Fagen
Reprise Records
Released 3/7/06
Produced by Donald Fagen
53 min.
SONGS: Morph the Cat - H Gang - What I Do - Brite Nitegown - The Great Pagoda of Funn - Security Joan - The Night Belongs to Mona - Mary Shut the Garden Door - Morph the Cat (reprise)
The first solo album in 13 years from Donald Fagen, Morph The Cat is another contemporary classic from half of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame duo Stee...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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