"Pretzel Logic" is probably the Steely Dan album that I play the least. In fact, I play it even less often than their somewhat uneven debut. It is the final album by Steely Dan, a band that gradually fell apart during the recording sessions. From then on, Becker and Fagen worked on perfecting their sound with a variety of studio musicians. At the same time, it’s an album that looks to the past with tracks such as the Duke Ellington cover ‘East St. Louis Toodle-Oo’ and the re-recorded early Donald Fagen track ‘Barrytown’, and jumps back and forth between genres: Blues, jazz, rock and pop. The best tracks are somewhat hidden on the album. These are certainly not the well-known single 'Rikki Don't Lose That Number' and the very popular B-side 'Any Major Dude Will Tell You', but rather the deep cuts 'Night by Night' (a blueprint for Toto, featuring a very young Jeff Porcaro on drums), the proggy (!) 'Charlie Freak' and the short and sweet 'Through with Buzz', which, with its string arrangement, almost sounds like an US version of the Electric Light Orchestra. Perhaps the most quintessential Steely Dan track on the album is the walking blues track 'Pretzel Logic', which already hints at the band’s future sound. Interestingly, the predecessor “Countdown to Ecstasy” sounds closer to the future SD sound than this album does. Overall, "Pretzel Logic" was a commercial breakthrough, at least compared to its less successful predecessor, but I just can’t bring myself to love this album unconditionally to the very end. What it has in common with all Dan albums is the perfect sound, the musical mastery, and – which should by no means be overlooked – the fantastic solos by Walter Becker, Jeff Baxter and Denny Dias.