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After 25 years I get the album better now than I did as a Steely Dan fan in college. It's really the voice of a 40-something remembering his adolescence and young adulthood in the 50s and 60s. Fagan's lyrics and vocals are funny, ironic but also really heart-on-the-sleeve wistful in ways I never heard when I was a kid. The music holds up, too -- better than I would have expected, and arguably better than late Dan (certainly better than the whiny "Gaucho").

 The sound is kind of a surrealistic time capsule -- some of the finest musicians on the planet (Jeff Porcaro, Valerie Simpson, Larry Carlton, the Brecker Bros. etc.) playing ultra-slick 1982 arrangements to lyrics gently poking fun at the 50s beat generation. The saxophone solo on "Maxine" (Michael Brecker I think) by itself is worth the price of admission.

 Ask those who follow the music industry closely and they will tell you that Donald Fagen's "The Nightfly" is clearly one of the great albums of the last 25 years. Currently there is an artist on the music scene named Norah Jones who has gained some fame with a retro/jazz sound. While Jones does a nice job on this, Fagan does it even better on this album. Donald Fagen's "The Nightfly" brings the jazz/blues sound to the forefront, but takes it a step further. "The Nightfly" also is a concept album. In the CD's liner notes, Fagen says that the songs on this album "represent certain fantasies that might of been entertained by a young man growing up in the remote suburbs of a northeastern city during the late fifties and early sixties". When you listen to the songs on this collection, you will easily see how the theme flows through - and as a result, this enhances the listening experience. Amazon review