2008 Woodie Awards
Donald Fagen Releases...Oh, Whatever
Jami Furo
Issue date: 4/14/06 Section: Arts & Entertainment
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Fagen, in his album entitled Morph the Cat, elaborates on the disco-inspired soft rock sound of his group Steely Dan, in addition to holding on to their affinity for the unconventional, the incomparable, and even, at times, the absurd.
The album is set up as a kind of story, practicing the nearly extinct method of creating a complete album, rather than a collection of separate songs. The album begins with the title track, "Morph the Cat," which tells the story of the unusual hero of the same name who protects New York City. The rest of the album is about people and groups of people in New York that, the artist suggests, Morph the Cat helps.
These songs talk about characters named Denise, Mary, Ray, Joan, Mona, and others, and their unusual situations or character traits. Each song has a subtitle along with the lyrics, which set the stage for each character's (or song's) dilemma. Each song makes clear references to New York City; Fagen will not let the listener forget it as a major part of the subject of the album.
The music has a light, fun sound, and the lyrics, on the surface, sound flippant. However,they lie amongst the poetic expressions of random collections of the events of daily life. When exploring the texts more deeply, it is apparent that Fagen is trying to convey the frustrations, tragedies, and conflicts within the things that normal people do every day. It is from these day to day conflicts that Morph the Cat saves the day.
While the lyrics of the songs on this album display Fagen's genius, the music itself leaves something to be desired. While the lyrics sound creative and poetic, it clearly sounds like Fagen wrote the lyrics separately from the music, because the two do not fit well together. The accents are on strange syllables, and the musical and textual phrases do not coincide. The result is an amateurish sound.
Each of the songs is performed by a relatively large instrumental force for a popular song, including guitars, bass drums, a whole array of saxophones, trumpet, and trombone. It resembles a jazz band more than anything else, and the sound is somewhat jazz-like. However, it is mixed more clearly with the unusual combination of disco and soft rock. Also, for such a large instrumental group, the texture is quite thin.
The album begins pleasantly. There is nothing "wow" about it, but it sounds alright. It is fun, and it is easy-going, until the realization comes that every song sounds almost exactly alike. The songs are almost indistinguishable from one another; the only main difference being the lyrics, and even those begin to sound alike after a while.
Donald Fagen's Morph the Cat is creative, but otherwise unappealing. It is good fodder for those who analyze poetry, but musically, it is boring, unprofessional, and, in general, nothing special.