<<< BACKWARD (“Lies I Can Believe”) ||| ONWARD (“Babylon Sisters (Live)”) >>> *** STEELY DAN SUNDAY INDEX *** Walter Becker and Donald Fagen have complementing talents — that’s a major reason of what made their partnership such a success — but there’s some overlap too, and one of the things they are both big on is making their songs groove.

<<< BACKWARD (“Fall Of ’92″) ||| ONWARD (“Medical Science”) >>> *** STEELY DAN SUNDAY INDEX *** With vicious and vulgar prose, it’s easy to figure out why “Fall of ’92″ failed to get included on 11 Tracks of Whack. I’m not really sure what barred “Lies I Can Believe” from making it onto the disc.

<<< BACKWARD (“Little Kawai”) ||| ONWARD (“Lies I Can Believe”) >>> *** STEELY DAN SUNDAY INDEX *** There were a few tracks that didn’t make it into the Whack Eleven, and “Fall of ’92″ was one of them. Musically, it can hang with most any of the approved ones found on 11 Tracks Of Whack

<<< BACKWARD (“This Moody Bastard”) ||| ONWARD (“Little Kawai”) >>> *** STEELY DAN SUNDAY INDEX *** This detailed re-evaluation of Becker’s first solo record from the mid-90s gave me a better appreciation of the album, but there are some quirks I still can’t overcome and the whole of “Hat Too Flat” is one of them.

<<< BACKWARD (“My Waterloo”) ||| ONWARD (“Hat Too Flat”) >>> *** STEELY DAN SUNDAY INDEX *** Back during the time that 11 Tracks Of Whack was new, I’d pop that CD out of the player after “Girlfriend” most of the time; I thought that most of this album’s filler were loaded up on the back end. Even when I’d occasionally [...]

<<< BACKWARD (“Cringemaker”) ||| ONWARD (“My Waterloo”) >>> *** STEELY DAN SUNDAY INDEX *** There are some things I don’t like about “Girlfriend” and other things I just love.

<<< BACKWARD (“Hard Up Case”) ||| ONWARD (“Girlfriend”) >>> *** STEELY DAN SUNDAY INDEX *** The real charm of 11 Tracks of Whack is not how much it sounds like classic Steely Dan, but how much it distances itself from it.

<<< BACKWARD (“Lucky Henry”) ||| ONWARD (“Cringemaker”) >>> *** STEELY DAN SUNDAY INDEX *** Throw together a funky, faux-reggae pulse, some dancehall horns, a delectably angular Becker guitar solo and his light-hearted humor about a relationship based on desperation, and you have a “Hard Up Case.”

<<< BACKWARD (“Junkie Girl”) ||| ONWARD (“Book Of Liars”) >>> *** STEELY DAN SUNDAY INDEX *** A slight modification of the surfer’s variation on the “no guts no glory” credo, “Surf And/Or Die” is a eulogy of sorts to a real-life young friend or acquaintance in Becker’s home environs at Hawaii who perished in an accident.

<<< BACKWARD (“Down In The Bottom”) ||| ONWARD (“Surf And/Or Die”) >>> *** STEELY DAN SUNDAY INDEX *** The co-architect of Aja comes out with a song fit for Tonight’s The Night. Well, OK, so maybe Neil Young didn’t use a drum machine or production that shimmered quite so much, but there’s that same desolation