Everything Must Go (Steely Dan album)
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- River Sound, New York City
- Hyperbolic Sound, Maui
- Bearsville, Woodstock, New York
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Everything Must Go is the ninth studio album by American rock group Steely Dan. It was released on June 10, 2003, by Reprise Records. It was the band's second album following their 20-year studio hiatus spanning 1980 through 2000, when they released Two Against Nature. Everything Must Go is the band's most recent studio album and their last with founding member Walter Becker before his death in 2017.
Background
"Godwhacker" developed from a lyric Donald Fagen wrote a few days after his mother died of Alzheimer's. "It's about an elite squad of assassins whose sole assignment is to find a way into heaven and take out God", he later explained. "If the deity actually existed, what sane person wouldn't consider this to be justifiable homicide?"Template:Citation needed
Reception
Critical
Upon its release, Everything Must Go received generally favorable reviews from music critics.<ref name="MC">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
In The Guardian, Richard Williams gave the album 3/5 stars, writing: "Unique among contemporary musicians, the post-comeback Steely Dan make records that are more fun to read than to listen to. ... But in all other respects, this new set of songs fails to live up to such assured invention. Thirty years on from their debut, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker have reduced the musical content of their compositions to a series of beautifully machined gestures, virtually devoid of the bright hooks and bold flourishes that gave them such a vital role in the wasteland of the 1970s, and sent fans skipping down the street humming snatches of "Barrytown" or "Deacon Blues". Time spent with the lyric sheet of Everything Must Go will not be wasted, but only the hard-bop horns on "Things I Miss the Most", the slick guitar lick of "Godwhacker" and the laconic strut of "Pixeleen" rise above the mood of well-heeled world-weariness."<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
For BBC Music, Chris Jones wrote: "Interviews had hinted that the boys had settled on a looser, more blues-based vibe and, sure enough, what we get this time around is a collection of grooves. This works for and against them. Drummer Keith Carlock is so deep in the pocket that he's in danger of being mistaken for spare change. A few nifty time changes really wouldn't go amiss and the relentless search for the funky backbeat often precludes the actual resolution of a hummable tune. Having said all this, there are at least three future classics here and it's still head and shoulders above what most contemporaries are achieving."<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
In New York, Ethan Brown wrote: "The greatness of Steely Dan lies in their pranks and grooves. ... But Steely Dan’s new album fails at what the band does best. The jokes are oddly, inexplicably stale (on "Green Book," a cashier is described as resembling Jill St. John), and the music is too often a bland boogie. Fagen and Becker have always flirted with fusiony tropes (long, woozy bridges, soft jazz horns), but here the style simply feels affectless. A couple of songs – "The Last Mall," with its refrain of "Last call / to do my shopping / at the last mall," in particular – come close to capturing Steely Dan’s acid wit. But Fagen and Becker don’t take the gags far enough; they’re only half-funny. For a band once so flawless in its sense of humor and its pranks – they offered Rock and Roll Hall of Fame voters Fagen’s childhood piano and a case of honey mustard as an incentive to induct them – Everything Must Go is a profound disappointment. It’s like a Christopher Guest film without the laughs."<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
During a concert at Los Angeles' Greek Theatre on July 8, 2011, Donald Fagen said that he felt the album was "underrated".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
Commercial
Everything Must Go is the only Steely Dan album not to achieve a Gold certification from the Recording Industry Association of America.<ref name="CR rank" />
Legacy
The album is frequently placed last on ranked lists of Steely Dan's albums, with Stereogum music writer Zach Schonfeld writing in 2020 that the album "seems to exist largely to make it easy for fans to identify the bottom rung in their Steely Dan album ranking".<ref name="SG legacy">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Writers for Stereogum, Classic Rock, and Louder each placed the album in ninth place (last place) when ranking Steely Dan's discography from worst to best.<ref name="SG rank">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="FO rank">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="CR rank">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Releases
Everything Must Go was also released as a DVD-audio disc with a multi-channel mix.
A special two-disc edition of Everything Must Go (one CD, one DVD) was released. The DVD, 'Steely Dan Confessions', follows Becker and Fagen touring Las Vegas after hours in a taxi promoting the album in a special version of the cult HBO cable show Taxicab Confessions, hosted by cabbie Rita.
In 2022, Analogue Productions remastered and reissued Everything Must Go on double 45 RPM vinyl and Hybrid Stereo SACD. The remastering was done by Bernie Grundman from the original master tapes.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Track listing
All songs written by Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. Template:Track listing
Personnel
Steely Dan
- Donald Fagen – lead vocals (all tracks except 5), organ (3, 5–7), synthesizer (5), piano (3), Hohner Clavinet (9), Fender Rhodes (1, 2, 5–7, 9) & Wurlitzer (1, 4, 8), solo synth (4, 6, 8), percussion (6, 9)
- Walter Becker – bass (all tracks), solo guitar (1–4, 6), lead vocals (5), percussion (9)
Additional musicians
- Ted Baker – piano (1–3, 6, 9), Fender Rhodes (8), Wurlitzer (5)
- Bill Charlap – piano (7), Fender Rhodes (4)
- Jon Herington – guitar (all tracks)
- Hugh McCracken – guitar (all tracks)
- Keith Carlock – drums (all tracks)
- Gordon Gottlieb – percussion (2, 3, 5, 7, 8)
- Ken Hitchcock – clarinet (7)
- Walt Weiskopf – alto saxophone (1), tenor saxophone (2, 5, 7, 9)
- Chris Potter – tenor saxophone (8)
- Roger Rosenberg – baritone saxophone (1, 7)
- Tony Kadleck – trumpet (1)
- Michael Leonhart – trumpet (2, 5, 7, 8)
- Jim Pugh – trombone (1, 7)
- Tawatha Agee – background vocals (4, 5, 9)
- Ada Dyer – background vocals (5)
- Michael Harvey – background vocals (5, 7, 8)
- Carolyn Leonhart – background vocals (2, 3, 5, 6), featured background vocal (7)
- Cindy Mizelle – background vocals (1, 6)
- Catherine Russell – background vocals (1, 4–6)
- Brenda White-King – background vocals (9)
Production
- Producers: Walter Becker, Donald Fagen
- Engineers: Tom Doherty, Roger Nichols, Dave Russell, Elliot Scheiner
- Assistant engineers: Suzy Barrows, Tom Doherty, Steve Mazur, Keith Nelson, Todd Parker, Matt Scheiner
- Mixing: Elliot Scheiner
- Mixing assistant: Joe Peccerillo
- Mastering: Darcy Proper
- Editing: Larry Alexander
- Arrangers: Walter Becker, Donald Fagen
- Horn arrangements: Donald Fagen
- Technician: Sam Berd
- Drum technician: Art Smith
- Piano tuner: Sam Berd
Charts
| Chart (2003) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Australian Albums (ARIA)<ref>Template:Cite Ryan</ref> | 68 |
References
External links
- Complete lyrics
- Interview with Fagen and Becker in Sound on Sound - Article by Paul Tingen about the making of Everything Must Go