Gaucho

“Gaucho” is the seventh studio album by the American rock band Steely Dan, released on November 21, 1980, by MCA Records. The album was recorded in lots of recording studios from New York City to California. To record the album, the band used at least 42 different musicians, and spent over a year in six studios. Tracks like “Babylon Sisters” feature drummer Bernard Purdie’s signature “Purdie shuffle”, and “My Rival” features haunting, dark keyboard lines from Donald Fagen.

Gaucho marked a significant stylistic change for the band, introducing a more minimal, groove, and atmosphere-based format. The harmonically complex chord changes that were a distinctive mark of earlier Steely Dan songs are less prominent on Gaucho, with the record’s songs tending to revolve around a single rhythm or mood, although complex chord progressions were still present particularly in tracks like “Hey Nineteen” and “Glamour Profession”. The track “Time Out of Mind” even features a bluesy solo from Dire Straits guitarist Mark Knopfler. The album still continued in the jazz-rock domain of their previous album Aja.

The lyrism of this album, as are all of Steely Dan’s records, has esoteric, obscure topics of drug addicts, prostitutes, and hipsters. “Time Out of Mind” is a song about heroin, specifically a young man’s first experience with the drug at the hands of a pretentious, pseudo-religious crank talking of “chasing the dragon”. While other songs like “Hey Nineteen” are about an aging hipster attempting to pick up a girl who is so young that she does not recognize Aretha Franklin playing on the stereo. The album was loved by the critics and was certified platinum by the (RIAA) Recording Industry Association of America. The album cover is based upon a wall plaque by Argentine artist Israel Hoffman, showing a couple tangoing.