we've discussed this before but isnt it interesting how steely dan make mjusic like sounds without ever actually cohereing into anything we might recogmise as music
It would be more interesting if it hadn't turned out that, despite the feeling one instinctively has that such a peculiar and almost self-contradictory trait ought to be extremely rare, it is in fact one shared by almost every band that you don't like.
Annoyingly though, on this one (and quite possibly all the others for all I know) it's hard to argue. I always wonder if one day some kind of thing will click in my brain and Steely Dan will make sense but every time I go to check them out and see if it has happened yet they still remain hidden behind some curtain of misapprehension that I can't even begin to penetrate. No reason to give up hope though, there have been many other bands that I similarly couldn't grasp and which did click with me one day though none took so long as this.
As an aside, I wonder to myself what it is that makes me say with some music "I don't like that" but with other music "I don't understand this yet" - I guess I am cravenly covering my arse in case I do somehow do come to like it one day but why have some bands got PR good enough to make me think in that way?