Japanese only SHM-CD (Super High Material CD - playable on all CD players) paper sleeve pressing. Universal. 2008.

In the fall of 1991, it was announced that 10cc's original quartet of members had reconvened in Woodstock, to begin work on their first album together in 16 years. Of course it didn't happen like that; Kevin Godley and Lol Creme both had other careers to consider at that time, and the bulk of the new record was left to Eric Stewart and Graham Gouldman -- whose own tenure at the helm ended when they split the band in 1983. And it shows. Although the prodigals did contribute to the album by way of backing vocals, their presence was scarcely felt. Neither did producer Gary Katz add anything to the brew, as songs that sounded terrific as demos ("Welcome to Paradise" in particular) were simply plastered over with studio lushness by session men that the 10cc-ers themselves did not even know. The result is a polished piece of nothing, an album that owes nothing to the 10cc that listeners know and love, and not much to anything that was going on elsewhere on the music scene at that time. It simply sits in the corner humming quietly to itself, and it's easy to forget that it even exists. ~ Dave Thompson

Japanese only SHM-CD (Super High Material CD - playable on all CD players) paper sleeve pressing. Universal. 2008.

The multiplatinum success of Aja made Steely Dan, the musical conceit of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, a household name. But that prosperity came bundled with a fateful triple-whammy for rock's dyspeptic duo: unrealistic commercial expectations, a critical backlash spawned by punk's nascent mewling, and the long-simmering meltdown of their artistic partnership. But the cool, perfect sheen of 1980's Gaucho tipped its hand to none of it. Ironically, those fashion victims who sniffed up their sleeves at Don and Walt's decadence-tinged Me Decade manifesto couldn't have had a clue that just maybe Gaucho's typically oblique protagonists had uncomfortably blurred from the third-person to the first this time 'round. At least that's what Becker and Fagen hint at in their smart-assed notes to this digitally remastered, definitive edition (all original artwork and printed lyrics restored) of the final album before their 20-year hiatus. Pristine and sonically polished (three years and seven studios worth), time has served Gaucho well. Even its sense of laconic detachment now seems but a logical bridge to the two-decade removed Dan of Two Against Nature. To their credit, Becker and Fagen didn't trash the first half of Steely Dan's legacy on Gaucho, they simply burnished it to oblivion. -Jerry McCulley

Japanese only SHM-CD (Super High Material CD - playable on all CD players) paper sleeve pressing. Universal. 2008.