Steely Dan's detached cool still plays well

August 30, 2006|Globe Correspondent

MANSFIELD -- Supreme cool is an ineffable quality. But you know it when you see it, or hear it, and Steely Dan -- a.k.a. singer-keyboardist Donald Fagen, guitarist Walter Becker, and, this time out, 10 sublime servants of a singular legacy -- had it in spades during a sharply focused two-hour performance Sunday night.

With the exception of a lengthy drum solo -- rock music's equivalent of the leisure suit -- and the band handing over the opening verses of ``Do It Again" to ex-Doobie Brother-cum-Motown revivalist Michael McDonald, who flattened them, this was a flawless evening. Together with lead guitarist Jon Herington , with whom he seamlessly traded licks and leads, Becker was in consummate form, his wry, pungent solos providing perfect punctuation marks for Fagen's acerbic commentary on youthful folly, adult subterfuge, and royal scams.

The gang opened with ``Bodhisattva," a lively, percolating jam that allowed the Dan to breathe deeply, stretch out, and heat up. Then it was on to the perpetually clever, peerless catalog: the jazzy nightscape of ``Aja," the impossibly taut funk of ``Josie," the stealth and precision of ``Black Friday." All of it delivered from Fagen's usual vantage point of aloof detachment, and sung with reedy, mordant glee.

As vibrant and timeless as Steely Dan's material remains, the collective sense memory triggered Sunday felt like a return -- not retreat -- to the '70s that ended when Ronald Reagan ushered in a new decade as president. Even the beguiling, deliciously Lolita-esque overtones of ``Hey Nineteen," from 1980's ``Gaucho," cheekily chronicled Fagen's and Becker's own passage past youth and march toward middle age. More than 25 years later, the song rang truer still. So did the smoothly intricate encore opener, ``FM," which gleamed like glass. Despite the fog and rain surrounding them, there was crystal-clear reception on stage, and it was just as Fagan said: ``No static at all."

Michael McDonald's 70-minute opening set was a mixed bag of his Doobie Brothers hits -- ``It Keeps You Runnin', " the jubilant ``Takin' It to the Streets" -- and the Motown chestnuts (``I Heard it Through The Grapevine," ``I Second That Emotion") he's re-recorded recently. McDonald's Doobie-era selections were a nice shot of nostalgia. His husky neo-soul offerings, however, came across as more Michael Bolton than Marvin Gaye.