Donald Fagen – Morph The Cat (2LP U.S import)

Morph the Cat is the third studio album by American singer-songwriter and Steely Dan frontman Donald Fagen. Released on March 7, 2006, to rave from critics, Morph the Cat was described by Fagen as his “death album” in an interview with Fred Kaplan of The New York Times.  Morph the Cat is also Fagen’s most guitar-centric record—in or out of Steely Dan—since the Dan’s classic Royal Scam (MCA, 1976). No less than six guitarists, including mainstays Jon Herrington, Wayne Krantz and Hugh McCracken, deliver everything from clean singing lines to grungy dirt and, on “H Gang,” a tone harkening back to the classic voice-box solo on “Haitian Divorce.”

Morph the Cat, is filled with anything resembling joyous optimism. Fagen addresses topics like homeland security (“Security Joan”), the current administration (“Morph the Cat”) and cults (“Mary Shut the Garden Door”), as well as personal issues like impending mortality (“Brite Nightgown”). The ghost of Ray Charles even shows up on the reharmonized minor blues of “What I Do.” Nor has Fagen lost his sardonic way with words. Who else could come up with a phrase like “Rabelaisian puff of smoke”?

But Fagen grooves just a little deeper on his own than he does with Becker, giving the darker subject matter a veneer that has you bopping your head along, even as he talks of alien invasion and death—a quality that has always made both his and Steely Dan’s albums so intriguingly paradoxical. Ignore the lyrics and the polished grooves are so infectious and the playing so tasty that Fagen’s sharp wit and rich jazz harmonies become obscured by the music’s sheer visceral nature.

US pressing- both sleeve and vinyls are EX.