- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
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Los Angeles TimesAt his best he spins these tales with a mix of literary craft and jazzman's cool, animating his narratives with vivid and colorful language. [5 Mar 2006]
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The album is imbued with a post-9/11 dread, which deters Fagen from recycling the nostalgia and Lynchian fantasy of his previous albums.
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Entertainment WeeklyWith its precisely calibrated funk grooves, exquisitely tasteful playing, and general air of blissed-out languor, Morph is firmly in the smoothed-out tradition of latter-day Dan discs like Gaucho. [17 Mar 2006, p.111]
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Contains his catchiest, most immediate compositions in decades.
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It is some of Fagen's finest work to date.
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Indeed, if you are looking for surprises then you won't find many. As well as stellar production, another Fagen trademark is his willingness, even necessity, for songs to run their natural course.
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Fagen's triumph of rendering post–9-11 New York most recalls how perfectly Steely Dan caught LA on 1980's 'Gaucho.'
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More so than on Kamakiriad, or on the tight Everything Must Go, there is a sense of genuine band interplay on this record, which helps give it both consistency and heart -- something appropriate for an album that is Fagen's most personal song cycle since The Nightfly, and quite possibly his best album since then.
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Despite the craft in this music--no, because of the craft in this music--most younger fans will run from Morph like it carried the very plague. No question, this album sounds uniform and rather overpleasant--engineered to a sheen of perfection.
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There's something weirdly compelling about hearing Fagen settle into this particular rut, especially on a set of songs about growing old in an age of terror.
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BlenderThe unhurried, full-retail rock arrangements are splashed with lite-R&B syncopations and snazzy-jazz harmonies. [Apr 2006, p.111]
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Q MagazineSmart, sophisticated, noodly--what else would you expect? [Apr 2006, p.113]
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UncutMorph... sounds utterly of a piece with Aja. [Apr 2006, p.104]
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 37 out of 45
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Mixed: 2 out of 45
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Negative: 6 out of 45
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May 28, 2017
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Jan 2, 2012
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JasonKJul 9, 2007