Lou Reed (who would know) once offered the following aphorism on rock music: “One chord is fine. Two chords is pushing it. Three chords, and you’re into jazz”.
One wonders what he would have made of such Steely Dan offerings as “Gaucho” (26 chords) or “Deacon Blues” (35 chords). This is a band whose fussy arrangements and absurdly smooth studio sheen—what literary critic James Wood called in another context a slickness unto death—has admittedly prompted not a few negative reactions over the years. Not long before his recent death, fellow musical curmudgeon Steve Albini gave voice to all who despise them in a lengthy Twitter rant (“Christ, the amount of human effort wasted to sound like an SNL band warm up”).
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