"Aja" sounds graceful, rounded, complete. But it is also a little dry, as if from constant refinement. The reason lies not in the familiar usurpation of technique, but in the exacting ambitions of Becker and Fagen, forever trying to integrate their jazz affections with pop appeal. For all its brilliant polish and acute sensibilities, "Aja" has less surface attraction than any other Steely Dan album.

However, although the ambience may strike some as cerebral, Steely Dan continue to work within a recognisable format of song. There is much here that I find memorable, and most of all "Deacon Blues," a relatively straightforward ballad—"languid and bitter-sweet," to borrow one of its own lines—that seems to be about the night-club musician as a kind of existentialist figure.

The mood is film noir…. And the chorus … is just about the most haunting they have written, with its images of...