Nightfly Trilogy: The Nightfly/Kamakiriad/Morph the Cat [Box] * by Donald Fagen

The multimedia Steely Dan collector's bonanza NIGHTFLY includes all three of Dan frontman Donald Fagen's solo albums: THE NIGHTFLY, KAMAKIRIAD, and MORPH THE CAT, plus bonus tracks, audio interviews, music videos, and more. When Fagen's 1982 solo debut, THE NIGHTFLY, was first released, its smooth, accessible textures seemed like a natural extension of Steely Dan's 1980 album, GAUCHO. Revealing as much about what Fagen's bandmate Walter Becker brought to the Dan mix, NIGHTFLY and its two successors are more subtle in their subversion than Becker and Fagen's group efforts. While they offer a similarly rich sonic menu that sounds just as meticulously constructed, there's not as much jazz roughage, and the irony is buried a bit deeper. If you squint really hard, you could almost mistake these crafty cuts for straight pop music.