'Aja' at 45: How the Darcys' Tribute Album Put Them a Decade Ahead of the Steely Dan Revival

Following last month's news that Steely Dan's studio catalogue would be treated to new audiophile-grade vinyl and CD reissues, the question should be asked: has the band's present-day cultural revival reached its fever pitch? The resurgent interest in the music and mythology of the '70s jazz rockers, led by Donald Fagen and the late Walter Becker, has elevated the group from a reference of antiquity in The Sopranos or Knocked Up to a cultural curio younger generations of listeners now engage with through the recordings, all manner of memes, dedicated Twitter fan accounts and, most comfortably, garish loungewear for which this writer paid too much to have shipped to Canada
 
Such preoccupation is assuredly familiar to listeners of older generations. For instance, former NFL wide receiver Chad Johnson (f.k.a. Chad Ochocinco) perhaps set the scene best when tweeting about how he likes "Listening to Steely Dan's song 'Black Cow' on repeat filling the air w/ the aroma of a Monte Cristo #2" cigar back in 2014. Before collaborating with Fagen in 2021, David Crosby was singing the praises of 1977's long-revered Aja and its similarly airtight 1980 follow-up Gaucho in his less combative moments on Twitter.
 
For all of America's cultural influence on this country, Canada was ahead of the Steely Dan revival by a full decade, with the Darcys releasing their cover-to-cover interpretation of Aja in 2012. That year, drummer Wes Marskell shared with Exclaim! how the decision to cover one of the most vaunted jazz-rock recordings in history was made "solely to redirect conversation" about when their self-titled debut LP would arrive.
 
"It was early in our career and we had just finished our self-titled record, which we thought was going to be our big break," Marskell reflects now. "We shopped and shopped it, but it didn't excite labels the way we had hoped. We were just sitting on a finished record and trying to figure out what to do next when the idea of covering Aja cropped up. What better way to ignore your demons and not face the harsh realities of life than to bury yourself in a new project, right?"
 
As it turns out, the Darcys' version of Aja — newly remastered by engineer Elisa Pangsaeng this year for a digital reissue marking its tenth anniversary — "nearly broke" the then-four-piece, between "trying comprehend what a mu major chord was while self-producing for the first time," as Marskell and vocalist-guitarist Jason Couse now write in a release.
 
While the Darcys sought to subvert the "sterility and perfection" of Steely Dan's Aja through pulling the compositions apart and treating them to darker art rock arrangements, reverence for the music Marskell and Couse first came to love as children is felt in all seven of their reinterpretations. Here, opener "Black Cow" ascends rather than struts, its instrumental layers swirling together like the titular drink, while "Deacon Blues" gets a crescendo more befitting of its final verse, making things much less "languid and bittersweet." The band's take on "Home at Last" features a guitar arrangement which brings Radiohead to mind as the bass bobs along faithfully in the background, while their treatment of the title track's instrumental intricacies channel the spirit of original album session stars, saxophonist Wayne Shorter and drummer Steve Gadd.
 
To mark both the 10th anniversary of the Darcys' reinterpretation of Aja, and the original album's 45th, Exclaim! spoke with Marskell and Couse about the ongoing Steely Dan cultural renaissance, reflections on their own version, who they would love to see cover Aja next, and how even if Fagen and Becker didn't hear their reinterpretation, Kanye West reportedly did.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length

How did you first hear Steely Dan and what did you think?
 
Marskell: I was raised on Aja. Looking back, it feels like it was always on at the house or in the car. I did get a lot of the classics like "Reelin' in the Years" and "Rikki Don't Lose That Number," but Aja was the jam. We had remastered CDs, [24K Gold] CD versions, vinyl in every colour — you name it.
 
So Aja was my entry point, but when Two Against Nature came out [in 2000], the boomers were frothing. The first Steely Dan release in 20 years meant my dad accepted the album with open arms and without critique. We can all agree "Cousin Dupree" is a nightmare, right? Anyway, he proceeded to play that album relentlessly for two straight years. So, Two Against Nature and its almost omnipotent presence in my teen life is what stored Steely Dan deep in the back of my brain for the rest of time. 

In 2012, Wes told Exclaim! how he soon came to know every word of Aja by age 10. Do you recall what it was about the music that captivated you at a young age?
 
Marskell: Aja may be an idiosyncratic studio opus, but at its core, it's very catchy pop music that effortlessly permeates your brain when played on repeat. It has whistles, drum solos, guitar solos, marimbas, and songs about cows. What more could a kid want?

Did discovering the studio lore and the well-reported perfectionist tendencies of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker endear you to Aja further?
 
Couse: Not long after we formed our first band in ninth grade, we attempted to record ourselves. We rented a digital recording console, read the instruction manual front-to-back, and got to work. We were quickly faced with the reality that making good-sounding records is extremely hard, and takes more than youthful enthusiasm and a microphone.

I think having that experience and perspective from an early age gave us real appreciation and respect for beautifully recorded music — Steely Dan's records being the highest achievement, of course, especially because the bulk of them were made before studios had any digital technology to edit or correct poor performances or engineering. From there, we were primed to become borderline obsessed with our own generation's studio-focused artists, like Radiohead and Beck.


Previously sharing with Exclaim! how the Darcys sought to subvert Steely Dan's approach to Aja, Wes spoke about how the band didn't look to mimic the "sterility and perfection" of the original. Are those qualities you value as a listener?
 
Marskell: If you don't know, Steely Dan is named after a steam-powered dildo in [William S. Burroughs' 1959 novel] Naked Lunch, which is the most well-suited name for a band in music history. Steely Dan make a style of music so exacting and perfect that it can feel a little rigid and fake. It may have a sterility and perfection to its sound, but it's also cerebral and sophisticated — a dramatic stylistic choice for a rock band — which is what makes them so unique.
 
For me, knowing their music is so intricately designed, I immediately want to get past the initial sheen so I can dig into its layers — everything from the horns, to the basslines, to the immaculately placed drum fills that sit unassumingly in the mix on first listen. Steely Dan songs are so rich with incredible musicianship from the best players on the planet that, once you start breaking it down, it becomes even better. 

Whether you came to learn of it in relation to Steely Dan or not, do you have any interest in the world of audiophilia?
 
Couse: I think anyone involved in recording music has to be interested in audiophilia to some extent. We strive to make impeccably recorded albums that sound amazing in an Atmos-equipped movie theatre, but also translate coming out of your iPhone. As an artist, you have no control over how people will experience your work, and, of course, we wish everyone was listening on expensive headphones, but that's something we let go of a long time ago.

The problem we see with audiophilia is the inherent elitism in purchasing high-end equipment. We believe more in the emotional communication of music, so it's hard to fully get behind the idea that there's a "better" or "worse" way to listen to music. Just listen however you can, and feel things. 

Is Steely Dan's Aja an album you keep in regular listening rotation?
 
Marskell: It gets about two full listens a month. I like cooking with it on. If I'm being honest, I give [first live album, 1995's] Alive in America a fair bit of action and I'm all about [fourth studio album, 1975's] Katy Lied. Jason is still an Aja guy through and through. 

What is your favourite song on Steely Dan's Aja and why?
 
Marskell: It's always been "Deacon Blues." At first, I just loved the horns, and I find the chorus melody so satisfying. I love how lush the background vocals are, and the saxophone solo rips. It's so unbelievably smooth that it feels like you're drifting in a dreamlike state while listening to it. 

What do you think of Steely Dan's other work aside from Aja?
 
Marskell: I'm on a Katy Lied wave and I have been for a while. The first five songs are untouchable, and I even referenced the album by name on "The Glory Days," the last song on [the Darcys' 2020 album] Fear & Loneliness. The lyrics on Katy Lied are insane, and the fact that these songs are even listenable shows just how good Becker and Fagen are at creating music. Beyond that, my real love for Steely Dan starts at [third studio album, 1974's] Pretzel Logic and ends with Katy Lied. I could go without hearing "Do It Again" or "Reelin' in the Years" for the rest of my life. I want the glossy studio magic, or I don't want it at all. 

Do you think the similarly studio-minded Gaucho is on the same level as Aja?
 
Marskell: Gaucho is a smash. It is definitely of the same quality and craft as Aja, and I like "Babylon Sisters" better than any of the songs on Aja. As a complete album, I think Aja feels more like a defined statement than Gaucho, and I get why it will be forever considered the Hall of Fame hat for Steely Dan. I often think about Gaucho as a companion to Aja the same way [Radiohead's] Amnesiac feels like a companion to Kid A. 

Through the years, the Darcys have also covered songs by Prince, Crowded House, Billie Eilish and Rihanna, and I read that for Aja, Jason had learned the songs on guitar and piano before the rest of the band joined in. Have you two maintained a set approach when it comes to reinterpreting the work of others?
 
Couse: After all these years, the only constant in our creative process is that it's different every time. We'll take turns pushing for a particular song, but it always becomes a fun and exploratory project. Of course, the early steps are breaking down the chords and melody, but then we usually get fixated on one element of the track and build from there. It could be a bassline, drum groove or vocal hook, but really the goal is to launch off of that element and see where it takes us.
 
We shoot ideas back and forth until we've found something we're both excited about. Often, recording covers is where we "try on" a slightly different aesthetic to see how it feels. With our Prince cover [of "Kiss"] for example, we were exploring what it was like to work with heavily programmed drums and synth-forward production. For our version of Billie Eilish's "Ocean Eyes," we wanted to see what it would be like to lean into a stripped-back acoustic vibe. The most important thing is that we always learn something from opening up these great songs, and with the knowledge that the song itself is so strong, we can safely explore new sonic territory. 

The Darcys were covering Steely Dan's "Home at Last" in live sets before the Aja reinterpretation arrived. What made that song the one to cover?
 
Marskell: Our version of "Home at Last" felt more like our self-titled album than the rest of our interpretation of Aja, which made it easy to assimilate into the live set. It was probably first out of the gate because it wasn't in a weird time signature, wasn't 10 minutes long, and rocked really, really hard.


Which of your Aja interpretations do you consider your personal favourite and why?
 
Marskell: I don't think of our interpretation of Aja in terms of singles, and any time I've listened to it, I've listened all the way through. Our goal was always to make it feel like a unified and cohesive album, and I believe we accomplished that. There are so many moments I love in each song that I can't pick a favourite, and I really encourage y'all to spin it as a whole when you dig in. 

Which of your Aja reinterpretations took the most tweaking to be satisfied with?
 
Couse: Definitely the title track. This song is a journey, and beyond its various movements and sprawling instrumentation, it also has long instrumental sections and a drum solo. We were perplexed by this one, and put off tackling it until mostly everything else was finished. We quickly learned what the track and CPU limits of our recording rig were, and had to enlist the help of our friend Matt Durante, who became a huge part of us taking this album over the finish line. Matt had the gear and patience to help us stack up the countless vocal layers, edit through the various drum takes, and chop down the sprawling 12-plus minutes to a "lean" 9:09.
 
Some of the notable challenges were building a satisfactory "wall of noise," making sense of the middle section keyboard solo largely guided by Wayne Shorter's saxophone work, recording the legendary drum solo inspired by Steve Gadd, and, of course, finding unique ways to hold the contemporary listener's attention through such a long track. Ironically, "Aja" was the quickest one to come together in the studio when Steely Dan recorded it at the Village Recorder in Los Angeles in 1977. 

In a release for the Darcys' remastered Aja, you write that a remix was considered as opposed to a remaster — perhaps a debate Fagen and Becker may have had. What aspects of your record were you considering adjusting before determining, "the flaws are what make it special?"
 
Marskell: When we first revisited our version of Aja ahead of the anniversary, we could immediately hear a revamped and pitch-perfect version of it. So, because we love making too much work for ourselves, we wrestled with the idea of reopening the sessions and going deep on the recordings. I love what we created, but Aja is a product of a lot of limitations including time, money, and skill level. It's pretty clear we didn't own basic studio tools like, I don't know, Auto-Tune.

We were keenly aware of how far we've all come over the past 10 years, and we really wanted to engage all those new skills. But this record is of a different era, and it isn't just ours to tinker with. [Guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Mike le Riche] and [bassist Dave Hurlow] put a ton of work into this project to make it what it is. I knew if we opened it up, we wouldn't stop at a few tweaks and we'd end up with a record virtually unrecognizable from our original release.

Something magical happens when you release a record: it feels complete and world-ready just by virtue of it being unchangeable. Jason and I need that end point, or we would tweak forever. People know and love our version of Aja, flaws and all, and we felt the remaster was a way of elevating the sonic spectrum and making it feel a little more contemporary without changing its core. And for the haters, they can now hate it in 24-bit/96kHz.

Had you revisited your version much before its recent remastering?
 
Marskell: Not really, to be honest. I sat down and gave it a good listen for the first time in a long time in late 2021, and it was like discovering a new band. It was a trip. I genuinely didn't know what was going to happen next. 

The release also recalls how the Darcys' version of Aja "was loathed as much as it was loved." What reactions — either from fans of the Darcys or Steely Dan purists — do you remember the most?
 
Couse: One night in Washington, DC, as we were getting ready to play the album in its entirety, a crew of grey haired men in their 50s and 60s — all wearing their vintage Steely Dan tees — lined up with their arms crossed near the front of the stage. Clearly, they were there to judge what these ragged Canadian boys had done to one of their most beloved albums.

Moment by moment, song by song, we could see their reactions in real time. Some left in disgust, one of them planted himself at the bar and drank himself deaf, and one even bought an LP just to show his friends how "terrible" it was. Lucky for us, the majority of this crew stayed to thank us for breathing a unique and youthful energy into their gracefully aging but still-favourite album. This was an important night for us, as we learned that it's way more satisfying to create something polarizing than it is to toe the line, and that's an ethos we've tried to carry forward in everything we do. 

After its release, the Darcys performed their Aja reinterpretation in its entirety on a North American tour — including a Toronto stop at Lee's Palace. In an accompanying short film, the band note that the performances incorporated "gear we hadn't used before." Do you recall what that gear was?
 
Couse: When we remastered the record, I watched those live videos for the first time in many years, and I was really proud of what we managed to pull off. [Hurlow] had the grooves locked perfectly in the pocket, and brought his Moog onstage for the first time so he could cover synth parts on top of his basslines — even running an expression pedal to modulate the filter with his foot while his hands were busy.

[Le Riche's] live rig started to look like a mission control, with a Roland SP-404 sampler mounted to his keyboard, a huge pedal board and a vocal harmonizer so he could cover what would otherwise have been played by two or three other players. He was truly impressive. I bought an old Yamaha CP-25 keyboard to cover the Rhodes parts. This thing ended up sounding like some kind of cheap, sci-fi movie version of a piano, but it worked perfectly for the phaser-y tones we used on the record. I stacked a Nord Electro on top for the organ sounds, and often had my guitar in my lap so I could jump to it quickly. It was the all-hands-on-deck approach that allowed us to pull this off, and we'll remember those shows forever. 


How, if at all, has Steely Dan influenced your work with the Darcys?
 
Marskell: For me, it's always been the basslines and tongue-in-cheek lyrics. Steely Dan taught me that you can have fun with what you're saying, and that you can still create serious music when adding a little humour to your lyrics. I've always believed in that, but it is something I have really embraced in my writing over the past few years. For example, Fear & Loneliness is a conceptual album that follows the ups and downs of a fictional unnamed cowboy actor trying to find their big break in Hollywood. I can assure you, that album wouldn't exist if I hadn't heard "Deacon Blues."

What do you make of the resurgent interest in Steely Dan's music and mythology?
 
Marskell: I think my generation needed a minute to cool off after the 43rd Grammy Awards. I love Steely Dan, but when Two Against Nature beat out [Radiohead's] Kid A, [Beck's] Midnight Vultures, and [Eminem's] The Marshall Mathers LP [for Album of the Year honours in 2001], I learned that the boomers ruin everything and that we are probably headed for total climate destruction. I think, collectively, we all took a deep breath, waited 20 years, and with the help of Paul Rudd, Kanye and The Sopranos, decided that we should take another look at the classic Steely Dan albums and what their languid grooves and sardonic lyrics had to offer.

Maybe Steely Dan isn't impenetrable smooth jazz, but some illusory fusion that both embraces and makes fun of the genre while elevating an outcast character that we can all relate to. That, or maybe we're all just getting a little older and entering our own metaverse of yacht-rocking boomerness where we just want to drink something tropical and lounge our days away. Regardless, it seems like we may have covered Aja about seven years too early.

You previously shared that upon releasing Aja, you had people offering to pass your record along to Steely Dan themselves. Did you ever find out whether or not it made it to Fagen and Becker?
 
Marskell: The story at the time was that we were to upload the album to a listen link specifically for them to access. I had tracking on the link, and we could see that it was listened to exactly twice. Take what you want from that. Interestingly, about a year later, I received an email from a producer working with Kanye West saying that Ye loved our version of "Josie." So, at this point, I just believe what I want to believe. 
 
Editor's note: West is a noted Danimal, having written Steely Dan personally to clear the prominent sample of the duo's "Kid Charlemagne" (from 1976's The Royal Scam) which forms the basis of "Champion" from his 2007 album Graduation.

Which artist or band would you pick to do a cover-to-cover reinterpretation of Aja?
 
Couse: That's tough, as I don't wish that sort of horror on anyone without the pedigree or fanbase to support such an undertaking. I think Arctic Monkeys have entered their yacht rock, or lunar module phase, and could really make something special out of Aja. I'd be all in on a Tame Impala version. That said, I think Arlo Parks would make an absolutely incredible version of Aja. Her voice has a casual playfulness that would reveal another dimension to the lyrics, and her strong Radiohead influence, London gloom, and minimal arrangements would make for weird and haunting renditions of the sunnier tracks, like "Black Cow" and "Peg."

Conversely, which artist or band would you pick to do a cover-to-cover reinterpretation of the Darcys' Fear & Loneliness?
 
Couse: The thought of someone making a front to back reimagining of Fear & Loneliness is so exciting. I really believe that recording a thoughtful cover of someone else's work is the highest compliment one musician can pay to another. My pick would be Nick Hakim, a Brooklyn-based artist I've been obsessed with for some time. Nick is one of those post-genre artists who combines such an interesting spread of influences that it's hard to put a name to — if I tried, it might be something like lo-fi-indie-psych-bedroom-soul — and I think his particular approach would reveal something gorgeous in the album. Fear & Loneliness is an L.A. album in spirit, so I'd be especially interested in hearing it through a New York lens.