DVD Review: Two Against Nature

In January of 2006, jazz-rock masters Donald Fagen and Walter Becker recorded a private concert for a few lucky fans at Sony Music Studios in New York City, playing both classics from their voluminous discography and new material from their then-upcoming Two Against Nature album, the first for Steely Dan in 20 years. After the concert aired on PBS' In The Spotlight series, Image Entertainment released it on VHS and DVD, the latter release featuring a wonderful DTS 5.1 surround track. For Dan fans new (that's me) and old, this release offers much of the fun of a concert experience, but with superior sonics and intimacy.

Even at 52, Donald Fagen's voice, at once both playful and sinister, comes through clearly from the very first track (an updated take on fan favorite "Green Earrings"). Sporting his trademark close-cropped hair and tinted glasses, he and partner Becker are accompanied on this musical romp by a cadre of superbly talented musicians, including guitarist John Harington and the late, great saxophonist Cornelius Bumpus. The tone of the performance is lighthearted at times, somber at others, and always intriguing, not least because the performers are clearly having a ball in their seemingly effortless waltz through decades of Dan history.

Nearly as entertaining as the music are the interspersed interviews with enthused attendees, backup singers, and instrumentalists, who provide anecdotes of their own experiences with the band's music and offer wildly varying interpretations of its meaning and inspirations. Together, they offer viewers tantalizing yet frustratingly limited glimpses at the sources of Steely Dan's immense popularity. And then there are the segments with Fagen and Becker, whose refusal to take most anything seriously- except for the music, of course- manifests in hilariously deadpan non-responses to interviewers' questions and is fully realized in a series of mock-public-access-television "interviews" in a blindingly white room between the duo and various musicians. You'll have to stifle a chortle when the overhead boom microphone begins frantically waving to-and-fro, and it's eccentricities like this that make the disc such a peculiarly wonderful thing to see.

Article Author: David Winchell

David Winchell is a student at the University of Pennyslvania who enjoys reading and blogging politics, film, technology, and philosophy.

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