Steely Dan: Everything Must Go

By GRAHAM REID

(Herald rating: * * *)

The Dan are sounding even more slick, smug and cynical on this typically polished and intellectual outing. Opening with The Last Mall, which uses consumerism as a metaphor for ennui and moral anorexia, this one digs deep into a dark, sharp-suited world, where to have it all means selling your soul. Only the Dan could have a character ponder missing the Audi TT, the houses on the Vineyard and Gulf Coast, and an Eames chair while building a balsa wood model of the Andrea Doria (a vessel which was rammed and sunk, incidentally).

That's kinda cool, studied and smart but, like most songs here, is delivered in their jazzy, measured and clever signature style. Becker breaks silence on the oddly gruff Slang of Ages and the reading of a sexy guns'n'chicks rock video on Pixeleen is astute. Lunch with Gina opens with this: "That must be her again, she's leaning on my bell, that cold psychotic ring, the one I know so well". Yep, it's business as usual in the emotionally frigid Danworld.

Label: Warners