[troutman]

Pretzel Logic: Understanding Why Your Dad's Favorite Band Is Playing Coachella

http://pitchfork.com/thepitch/632-pr...ing-coachella/

Like no other act at Coachella, Steely Dan test our musical intuition: discordance of music and lyrical themes, songs of transgressive creepitude set what passes for fardley 70's studio jazz to most milennials? It’s just that juxtaposition that makes Steely Dan particularly sinister. Lyrics about incestuous lechers, pedophiles, murderers, drug dealers and other low-down members of society feel more unsettling nestled into inoffensive music—a smooth sheen with an ickiness beneath. Steely Dan are, in fact, dangerous, edgy and cryptic, even (and especially) if its music doesn't sound foreboding. Donald Fagen and Walter Becker may be out-of-touch and casting from their prime, but they’re not boring.

There’s an artistic tension here. The way David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti use their music in films has these kinds of tense contradictions as well. Steely Dan is counterintuitive in that way. The Dan always gets brushed off as bland easy listening, yet their influence in indie rock--not exactly all pervasive--is easy to spot when it appears.

Let’s look past the sound and give Steely Dan more credit than just being Boring Old Men. They’re Dirty Old Men. They play just what they feel.