More of the Music of Steely Dan
As of 2023, the yellow label reissues are no longer competitive with the right black label originals. They can still be very good sounding, but they can’t win shootouts, or at least they haven’t in a very long while. Anything is possible, but not any such thing is likely.
Our review from 2009:
It’s time for our annual Countdown to Ecstasy — whatever that is — and for 2009 this copy took TOP HONORS with superb sound on both sides! We just finished doing a huge shootout for this album with well over a dozen copies, winnowed down from close to twenty at the start, and the winner and new champion is this very copy — on the yellow label no less!
We had done shootouts in the past in which all the best copies of this album were on the black label, but this time around the yellow labels came out victorious.
As the record grader on this one, I had no idea what copy on what label was playing. I just heard what I heard, and what I heard on this copy was some of the BEST SOUND EVER for Countdown.
This album shares top honors with Katy Lied as the toughest Steely Dan album to get to sound right. So many copies are such sonic let-downs: congested, bass-shy, veiled, compressed and grainy. There’s a good reason we don’t do this album but once a year, and it’s not because of a lack of demand. It’s because so many copies sound so bad.
Both Sides Are Amazing
Dropping the needle on this copy was an entirely different experience — on BOTH sides. From the moment the needle hit the grooves, we were treated to a BIG, WIDE soundfield. The sound went from wall to wall and floor to ceiling — exactly what you want for this music. The vocals were smooth and silky, dramatically different from the grainy, bleached sound we heard on most of the copies we played.
Side one is STUNNING — airy and open up top, wonderfully meaty and punchy down low. The vocals are full-bodied and breathy with wonderful clarity. The overall sound is open, spacious, transparent, and tonally correct from top to bottom. The marimba (played superbly by the one and only Victor Feldman) sounds JUST RIGHT — you can really hear the room around it. We rate side one an A++ – A+++. We heard one copy that had slightly better transients on this side so we took half a plus off the grade. Even with twenty copies to play you will have a hard time finding fault with this side one.
As amazing as side one is, side two is EVEN BETTER! Everything you’d want from a Hot Stamper pressing of this album is here in generous quantities — energy, deep bass, richness, sweetness and more. The clarity and presence of this side is STAGGERING! The transparency went far beyond our expectations — you can really hear INTO the soundfield on this copy like nothing we’d played before.
The vocals are breathy and full-bodied with the silky quality that drives us wild here at Better Records. The bass is well-defined, the highs fully extend, and the soundfield is gigantic.
We rate side two A+++ — Master Tape Sound, As Good As It Gets (AGAIG).