cover pic Two Against Nature
Steely Dan
 
 
 
Giant Records   24719
New York -- Fall 1999
 
Hear it!  58K WAV sample                       Buy it!  buy it at Amazon.com
 
Chris with The Dan Walter Becker: guitar, bass guitar
Donald Fagen: vocals, keyboards
Chris Potter: alto saxophone on 4; tenor saxophone on 1 and 9
Lou Marini: alto and tenor saxophones
Lawrence Feldman: alto and tenor saxophones; clarinet
Dave Tofani: tenor saxophone
Roger Rosenberg: baritone saxophone; bass clarinet
Roy Hitchcock: clarinet
Michael Leonhart: trumpet, Wurlitzer
Jim Pugh: trombone
Ted Baker: piano, Fender Rhodes
Jon Herington, Paul Jackson Jr., Hugh McCracken, Dean Parks: guitars
Dave Shank, Steve Shapiro: vibraphone
Tom Barney: bass guitar
Keith Carlock, Leroy Clouden, Vinnie Colaiuta, Sonny Emory, Ricky Lawson, Michael White: drums
Gordon Gottlieb, Will Lee, Daniel Sadownick: percussion
Carolyn Leonhart, Cynthia Calhoun, Michael Harvey: backing vocals
Amy Helm: whistler
  1. gaslighting abbie
    2.
  2. what a shame about me
  3. two against nature
  4. janie runaway
    5.
  5. almost gothic
  6. jack of speed
  7. cousin dupree
  8. negative girl
  9. west of hollywood
    10.
Kind words from the Steely Dan website:
 
Donald Fagen: “[Chris is] a very fluid player, and when he overdubs, he has no inhibition. It’s just like he’s playing live. The first time I saw him, he was playing with the Mingus Big Band. I’ll always remember the thing about him was, he had this amazing brain - to - fingers thing happening. Just instantaneous. He can do whatever he wants, essentially. He’s very fluid.”
 
***
 
Becker: “We just couldn’t shake him. He seemed prepared to improvise soulfully and swingingly over any kind of chords we gave him. Jeez.”
 
Fagen: “No matter what we came up with it didn’t seem to really matter to him, running the changes usually at first or second sight.”

Homegrown Review
 
At the top, the bottom line: Two Against Nature is a Steely Dan album. It sounds like a Steely Dan album. If you liked their earlier stuff, chances are good you’ll like this about as much. If you didn’t like their earlier stuff, there’s probably not much here that will change your mind about them. I’ll leave it to the Dan fans to analyze the album more closely than that. Our major concern here is Chris’s role on the tracks which feature him.
 
I’ve seen and heard a lot about Chris’s work on this album -- all of it good, BTW. Special mention is often made of his epic-length solo [over four minutes] on west of hollywood, and his inspired improvisation over chord changes which, in the context of pop music, are inarguably strange. A sample from this solo clearly demonstrates that, not only do these unusual modulations not throw him, but he creates a melody of sufficient strength and structure to make these changes sound natural, and not at all odd. Chris’s “vision” supplies a logical unity for the song that the bare harmonies do not demonstrate. No wonder the Dan fans are impressed! His work on this track is most often cited as the high point of the album.
 
However, anyone familiar with his playing and writing over the last few years will know that Chris often performs with such an unflappable sense of rightness. It is his placement in an unusual pop-music context that makes his qualities as a player and musical thinker appear more prominent.
 
And that may be the key thing about his work here: the fact that he is being exposed to a large and discerning audience. There are few [if any] fans in popular music who listen with as much intensity and devotion, and who analyze and discuss as intelligently, as Dan fans. On Two Against Nature Chris is presented to an audience unfamiliar with him but prepared to listen to him closely and attentively. [Had he, say, contributed a solo to a Britney Spears track, I suggest it would go largely unnoticed, notwithstanding her millions of listeners...] This kind of exposure is good for Chris.
 
And I’d say the chance to hear what Chris can do is good for the Dan fans, as well -- a win-win situation.