Donald Fagen - Kamakiriad (1993)

Quick notes about the album title and concept; it is helpful to know this stuff, but certainly not required for listening. The word Kamakiri is Japanese for "manits" or "praying mantis." As for the concept, here's what Fagen says in the liner notes:

Kamakiriad is an album of eight related songs. The literal action takes place a few years in the future, near the millennium. In the first song, "Trans-Island Skyway," the narrator tells us he is about to embark on a journey in his new dream-car, a custom-tooled Kamakiri. It's built for the new century: steam-driven, with a self-contained vegetable garden and a radio link with the Tripstar routing satellite. The next six songs describe his adventures along the way. In the last song, "Teahouse On The Tracks," the narrator lands in dismal Flytown where he must decide whether to bail out or to rally and continue moving into the unknown.

I loved (and still love) Fagen's first solo album, 1982's The Nightfly, and waited for this follow-up for 11 years. It's no Nightfly (warning: I find it hard to write about The Nightfly in a non-hyperbolic way). The Fagen sound is still present on this album despite producer Walter Becker's attempt to sterilize it, but the melodies aren't as strong as anything on The Nightfly or Aja. There's a lot of one or two chord vamping, which might work for Miles Davis, but not here. Still, it's really good pop music - I guess I shouldn't compare it to Nightfly, but I can't help it. It's good, but not great. However, Fagen's 'good' is still better than 95% of the music released in the '90s and I'm happy when one of these songs comes up while I'm shuffling through tunes on the computer or smartphone. I usually shy away from giving albums a rating, but if The Nightfly is a 10 (and it is), Kamakiriad is about a 7. The album was nominated for the Album of the Year Grammy, but lost to the soundtrack to The Bodyguard.

Press of the time:

• Billboard: "solo tour-de-force"
• CashBox: "It's not the Steely Dan reunion we've all been waiting for, but it is pretty damn close."
• Rolling Stone (★★★): "songs are sleek, witty confections"
• Stereo Review: "Needless to say, it's marked by superlative musicianship, class, and intellectual irony."
• Robert Christgau (***): "virtuoso time warp--as gorgeous and shallow as Aja"

Peak on the US Billboard Top 200 chart: #10 (June 12, 1993)

Tracks: My favorites are Countermoon, Springtime (which sounds the most like a Steely Dan song), Tomorrow's Girls, Florida Room, and Teahouse On The Tracks. I didn't like one of the singles, Snowbound, for several years, but then it grew on me. Still, I sometimes skip it, along with the seemingly never-ending On The Dunes.

Personal Memory Associated with this CD: In the summer of 1993, my wife was expecting our first child and I traveled to Mexico for a church mission trip (those two events are entirely unrelated). However, this CD got a lot of playing time that summer. When the mission group returned from Reynoso (where we had helped build a school, I think), we went to a club/restaurant on St. Mary's Street in San Antonio (Tycoon Flats, maybe) and Tomorrow's Girls was playing, so this CD always reminds me of that.

Previously revisited for the blog:
The Nightfly (1982)