Morph the Cat (w/ Bonus DVD) CD

Product Summary

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Format: CD

Manufacturer: Reprise / Wea

Buy.com Sku: 202245321

UPC: 093624997627

UPC 14: 00093624997627

Release Date: 3/14/2006

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Song Listing

Disc 1

Song Title

Sample

1. Morph the Cat ~ Donald Fagen

2. H Gang ~ Donald Fagen

3. What I Do ~ Donald Fagen

4. Brite Nightgown ~ Donald Fagen

5. Great Pagoda of Funn, The ~ Donald Fagen

6. Security Joan ~ Donald Fagen

7. Night Belongs to Mona, The ~ Donald Fagen

8. Mary Shut the Garden Door ~ Donald Fagen

9. Morph the Cat (Reprise) ~ Donald Fagen

The first solo album in 13 years from Donald Fagan, Morph The Cat is another contemporary classic from half of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame duo Steely Dan. With Fagan's adventurous musical depth, uniquely layered lyrics and entertaining subject matter (from a conversation with the ghost of Ray Charles to a romantic liaison with an airport security guard named Joan), Morph the Cat is the newest chapter chronicling the most sophisticated music in rock.

Track Listing
1. Morph The Cat
2. H Gang
3. What I Do
4. Brite Nightgown
5. Great Pagoda Of Funn, The
6. Security Joan
7. Night Belongs To Mona, The
8. Mary Shut The Garden Door
9. Morph The Cat (Reprise)

Album Notes and Credits

Notes & Personnel Info
	Personnel: Donald Fagen (vocals, Fender Rhodes piano); Wayne Krantz (guitar); Marvin Stamm (trumpet); Freddie "Ready Freddie" Washington (bass guitar); Keith Carlock (drums); Bashiri Johnson (percussion); Cindy Mizelle (background vocals).
	Donald Fagen may be one of the most subversive artists in the pop/rock world. Unlike, say, Prince or Sinead O'Connor, who've worn their subversion on their sleeves, Steely Dan main man Fagen has wormed his way into the American consciousness (and pop charts) with a deceptively harmless sound. Like the Dan catalog and Fagen's previous solo albums, MORPH THE CAT seems on the surface like ear candy that goes down easy. Lurking just below the skin of Fagen's trademark bouncy grooves and pristine, lite-jazz production, however, is a seamy, disconsolate underworld that bespeaks both a lifelong cynicism and a deliciously morbid sense of humor.
	Though MORPH isn't Fagen's first post-9/11outing (that would be Steely Dan's EVERYTHING MUST GO), it deals more explicitly with that world. For all the foreboding expressed in "Mary Shut the Garden Door," though, it takes a narrator as willfully perverse as Fagen to find himself turned on by the airport security officer giving him the once-over in "Security Joan." MORPH THE CAT is prime Fagen, existing in that singular Twilight Zone where Bob James plays the Leonard Cohen songbook and makes you love it.
Producer: Donald Fagen
Musical Guests
	Cindy Mizelle

Compilation Appearances

	Gold (Expanded Edition)
	20th Century Masters:millennium Colle
	Morph the Cat

Associated Artists and Works

	Becker & Fagen
	Becker, Walter
	Original Soundtrack

Technical Info

	Release Date : 03/14/2006
	Original Release Date : 2006
	Catalog ID : 49976
	Label : Reprise
	Number of Discs : 1
	Studio/Live : Studio
	Mono/Stereo : Stereo
	SPAR Code : n/a
	UPC : 00093624997627

Professional Reviews

Rolling Stone (p.64)
- 3.5 stars out of 5 -- "[H]is catchiest, most immediate compositions in decades....[The] spirited results prove Fagen can still pop amid his jazz."

Uncut (p.104)
- 5 stars out of 5 -- "[T]he juxtapositions play out while he reflects on mortality....In 2006, as in 1976, pop music doesn't get any headier than this."

JazzTimes (p.99)
- "MORPH THE CAT fans out in all sorts of magical directions, delivering multilayered musings on everything from a skyward feline determined to brighten New York's trampled soul to a bedraggled but bemused traveler eager to hand his heart to a wand-wielding airport-security officer."

Mojo (Publisher)
(p.104)
- 3 stars out of 5 -- "[An] impeccably played, beautifully produced and nicely crafted album."