...and now during Fagen's intermission....Walter
I absolutely love Steely Dan. There has never been a time, nor will there ever be, when I couldn't sit down and listen to any of their albums and immediately take off right where I left off. SD music always sounds current and relevant and...there isn't anything like it. But the Steely Dan sound depends heavily on Fagen's voice and when it's absent, even with the great musicians, arrangements and production, WB just can't carry it off. Walter contributes at least 50% to the Dan songwriting and arranging so you have to give him credit for that but he just doesn't have the pipes to be the up-front guy. It must be tough to be the "other" guy especially when your counterpart is Don Fagen. To be fair though I must say that I've not been exactly blown away with Fagen's latest releases either. There's an unmistakable synergy that's missing in their solo efforts.

Steely Dan
For all steely Dan fans; starving for new material; this album is for you.
Although it is missing Donald Fagen; there is a Steely Dan sound in every track. Highly recommended.

This CD gets better with every listen
I like this CD.
It has touches of the first rate Steely Dan arrangements on it.
I know it doesn`t have the exact sound of a SD CD because it is Walter and not Donald on vocals.
That's alright though because it makes the CD distinctive.
Steely Dan,
Donald Fagen
Walter Becker. Its all good!

Who'd have thunk he did Reggae? (3.5 starsThe sound
We've got some Steely and some Steel Pulse. The CD's good stuff, but it's not as epic as Steely Dan's music was. Listening the first time, you're not quite sure what you'll get next. I like the variety, but I think I've re-ordered the album on a playlist to have the similar styles next to each other, just a personal preference.

My favorites, from the reggae "Bob's Not your Uncle, Anymore." From the Steely Dan, "Circus Money."

My suggestion: if you're a Dan fan, listen to the selections and pick the music you want. If you're more eclectic, the whole CD may be for you.

Rebecca Kyle, July 2008

The dark side of Steely Dan
Walter Becker's previous solo album ("11 Tracks of Whack") was an optional purchase for many Steely Dan fans. Although it contained some great songs (notably "Junkie Girl"), it was slightly let down by average production and over-enthusiastic use of the drum machine, not qualities one usually associates with this band. In contrast, every Dan afficianado will want to buy a copy of "Circus Money", for one very simple reason. It contains at least two songs - "Downtown Canon" and "Paging Audrey" - that will immediately take their place as quintessential, 24 carat gold, spine tinglingly good, classic Steely Dan songs - high praise indeed, given the band's previous achievements. The rest of the album is very fine too, but these two tracks alone will justify the decision to buy for anyone with a serious interest in the band. "Circus Money" also identifies very clearly Walter Becker's distinctive contribution to the band's lyrical muse. The atmosphere of sleazy decadence, the pre-occupation with characters living marginal lives on the edge of society, the droll, self-deprecating humour with which the stories of these wayward characters are told - it's clear now that these essential ingredients of Steely Dan's rich imaginative world owe somewhat more to Becker than Fagen. There's also a freshness to the musical arrangements here, and the quality of the individual solos, that was sometimes (for me at least) missing from Donald Fagen's 2006 "Morph the Cat". Whilst Fagen's solo release contained, as always, much great music, there was a slight sense on occasions of some of the musicians being on auto-pilot, a noticeable tendency for some of the songs to follow a predictable course, as though they were sub-consciously modelled on an earlier Steely Dan vintage. If Fagen is to continue with his solo endeavours, he perhaps need to take a few more risks, as Becker has done here on "Circus Money". Personally I'd still prefer to see them working together, as the whole is even greater than the sum of the parts.