Pretzel Logic: Steely Dan (Probe)

Reviewed by Richard Best.

A certain acquaintance in Wellington says this album is "cold".

Which merely goes to show that one man's meat is another man's poison since "Pretzel Logic" is really this year's craftiest skib of smash-hit after The Raspberries' "Side 3".

For those unsure, Steely Dan have always been "cold" — just like electric heaters are "very drying" and eggburgers "expensive" at 65 cents. Theirs has never been an exacting science of involvement a la Black Oak Arkansas of simplicity and one wonders — as one is prone to wonder in times of muddle — if this showy preference for circuitous egomania might spell eventual doom for this most literate of rock combos.

So says the I.Q. in me which bids to laugh knowingly as Steely Dan now dance quickly through 11 new white upper-middle-class tunes and words, all nicely melodic and lots better than their second LP outing, the sometimes tedious "Countdown To Ecstasy".

In three weeks though, I still haven't struck one concrete solution to the problem posed in side one, track one's "Rikki, Don't Lose that Number" where "number" is (a) a marijuana joint, (b) a telephone number or, more likely, (c) a loosely-spun reference to some of Rikki's positivism, specifically what I don't know.

Nor have I worked out where "Barrytown" is or who "Charlie Freak" is. But then I never understand Time's "Letters to the Editor", someone has yet to explain Zionism to me in less than 500 words and I still marvel at the rolling mechanism in the Hygenic Towel Dispenser.

A lovely LP worth all of five stars but I now feel compelled to roll up and die with Simon and Garfunkel where the sentiments are strictly middle-class.

And what in God's name is pretzel logic anyway?