Although the album was a critical success, it failed to generate a hit single in the United States, and consequently only charted at number 35 on the Billboard Top LPs & Tapes chart, though it was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 1978. The album has received perfect scores from music critics in numerous retrospective reviews.
Musical style
Like Steely Dan's 1972 debut album Can't Buy a Thrill, Countdown to Ecstasy has a rock sound that exhibits a strong influence from jazz.[8] It comprises uptempo, four- to five-minute rock songs,[9] which, apart from the bluesyvamps of "Bodhisattva" and "Show Biz Kids", are subtly textured and feature jazz-inspired interludes.[10] Commenting on the album's style and production, music critic Tom Hull said it is "clean, almost slick", with "no dissonance, no clutter", reminiscent of 1940s bop and "the overproduced early 60s pop rock".[11]Countdown to Ecstasy was the only Steely Dan album written and arranged for a live band.
Bop-style jazz soloing is set in the context of a pop song on "Bodhisattva".[12] "The Boston Rag" develops from a jazzy song to unrefined playing by the band, including a distorted guitar solo by Jeff "Skunk" Baxter. "My Old School" features reverent saxophones and aggressive piano riffs and guitar solos.[13]Jim Hodder's drumming on the album eschews rock music for pop and jazz grooves.[14]
Lyrics and themes
Countdown to Ecstasy has similar lyrical themes to Can't Buy a Thrill.[9] It explores topics such as drug abuse, class envy, and West Coast excess.[15] "Your Gold Teeth" follows a jaded female grifter who uses her attractiveness and cunning to take advantage of others,[16] "My Old School" was inspired by a drug bust involving Walter Becker and Donald Fagen while they were students at Bard College,[13] "King of the World" explores a post-nuclear holocaust United States, and "Show Biz Kids" satirizes contemporary Los Angeles lifestyles.[17] Critic Tom Hull described the lyrics as "a running paste together joke [...] sufraintelligent, witty and slyly devious", citing as an example the following lyrics from "Show Biz Kids": "They got the booze they need / All that money can buy / They got the shapely bods / They got the Steely Dan T-shirt / And for the coup de grâce / They're outrageous."[11]
According to Rob Sheffield, Becker and Fagen's lyrics on the album portray America as "one big Las Vegas, with gangsters and gurus hustling for souls to steal." He views it as the first in a trilogy of Steely Dan albums that, along with Pretzel Logic (1974) and Katy Lied (1975), showcase "a film noir tour of L.A.'s decadent losers, showbiz kids, and razor boys."[18] Erik Adams of The A.V. Club called the album a "dossier of literate lowlifes, the type of character studies that say, 'Why yes, the name Steely Dan is an allusion to a dildo described in Naked Lunch.' These characters hang around the corners of the entire Steely Dan discography, but they come into their own on Countdown to Ecstasy".[19]
Some songs on the album explore more spiritual concerns. The opening song, "Bodhisattva", is a parody of the idea that the disposal of one's possessions is a prerequisite to enlightenment. Its title refers to Bodhisattva, or people who are of the belief that they have achieved spiritual perfection, but remain in the material world to help others. Fagen summarized the song's message as: "Lure of East. Hubris of hippies. Quick fix".[20] "Razor Boy", meanwhile, is a bitter, ironic pop song with lyrics that subtly criticize complacency and materialism.[21] According to Ivan Kreilkamp of Spin, in the song "Steely Dan speaks to us from that 'cold and windy day' when the trappings of hipness and sexiness fall away to reveal a lonely figure waiting for a fix. 'Will you still have a song to sing when the razor boy comes and takes your fancy things away?' Fagen asks a generation stupefied by nostalgia and self-involvement".[21]
Title and packaging
The album's title was selected as a joke about attempts to rationalize a state of spirituality.[20] The original cover painting was done by Fagen's then girlfriend, Dorothy White. The president of ABC Records, Jay Lasker, disliked it and insisted it be re-drawn. The art proofs were subsequently stolen by Becker and Fagen during an argument over the final layout.[22]
Marketing and sales
Countdown to Ecstasy was released in July 1973 by ABC Records in the United States and Probe Records in the United Kingdom. It failed to generate a hit single[23] and was less commercially successful than Can't Buy a Thrill,[24] only charting at number 35 on the Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart.[7] Nonetheless, it spent 34 weeks on the chart[24] and was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 1978, recognizing the shipment of 500,000 copies in the U.S.[25]
Reviewing the album in August 1973 for Rolling Stone, David Logan said that, while it might follow a "formula", the songs do not become "redundant or superfluous", and that, though the band's "playing is hardly unique and their singing is occasionally hampered by patently ridiculous lyrics, they exhibit a control of the basic rock format that is refreshing and that bodes well for the group's long-term success."[9]Billboard complimented the "studio effect" of the dual guitar playing and found the "grandiloquent vocal blend" catchy.[14]Stereo Review called it a "really excellent album" with "witty and tasteful" arrangements, "winning" performances, "high quality" songs, and a "potent and persuasive" mix of rock, jazz, and pop styles.[17] In Creem, Robert Christgau made reference to "studio-perfect licks that crackle and buzz when you listen hard" and "invariably malicious" vocals that back the group's obscure lyrics,[33] and he named Countdown to Ecstasy the ninth best album of 1973 in his year-end list for Newsday.[34] Tom Hull, in a review published in Overdose in April 1975, said the album is "perhaps the most representative, certainly the best realized," of Steely Dan's albums, as far as their "clean, almost slick" style is concerned, and called the overall effect "strange, strangely comfortable, queasy almost", and the band "a dangerous group, one that should be watched."[11]
In Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981), Christgau said that, thanks to Fagen's replacement of Palmer, who Christgau felt did not fit the group, Steely Dan was able to achieve a "deceptively agreeable studio slickness" on the album.[27]Paul Lester described the album in an entry in The Encyclopedia of Albums (1998) as a progression from Can't Buy a Thrill, and wrote that "Becker and Fagen offered cruel critiques of the self-obsessed 'Me' decade", while their "blend of cool jazz and bebop, Brill Building song craft and rock was unparallelled at the time (only Britain's 10cc were creating such intelligent pop in the early Seventies)."[24] In his 1999 autobiography A Cure for Gravity, British musician Joe Jackson described Countdown to Ecstasy as a musical revelation for him that bridged the gap between "pure pop" and his jazz-rock and progressive influences and influenced his subsequent attempts at songwriting.[35] Pat Blashill wrote in a review in Rolling Stone in 2003 that the "joy in these excellent songs" and in the band's playing revealed Steely Dan to be "human, not just brainy," "like good stretches of the Stones' Exile on Main St."[13] In The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), Rob Sheffield called the album "a thoroughly amazing, hugely influential album" with "cold-blooded L.A. studio rock tricked out with jazz piano and tough guitar."[31]Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic found Countdown to Ecstasy to be "riskier" musically than the band's debut album, and called the songs "rich with either musical or lyrical detail that [Steely Dan's] album rock or art rock contemporaries couldn't hope to match."[10] Chris Jones of BBC Music said the ideas on the album are "post-modern" and "erudite", and asserted that the band was "setting a benchmark that few have ever matched."[15]
