(Reprise/Rhino)

I feel like I completely understand the weirdness of Donald Fagen. In the fall of 2007, on a truly strange Saturday night, I visited the campus of Bard College—the place that inspired the ire of “My Old School” and the oddball outsider feel of “Barrytown,” to name just a couple among Steely Dan’s pathos-laden catalog. On that fall eve, I had an unquestionably surreal experience at the liberalest of East Coast liberal arts colleges, and maybe, just maybe, a small part of the wit and twisted wisdom of Mr. Fagen was imparted to me. Or maybe not. That’s another story for another time. Still, it makes me ready to accept what is being called the Nightfly Trilogy. Of course, I suppose I was ready for it from the get-go. Like a strand of DNA borne by any reasonably hip folks nearby a turntable in the mid 1970s, the tight horns and detached cool of Steely Dan was a part of my bloodwork. In 1982, I got my first radio—a Panasonic alarm clock complete with AM/FM—just in time for Fagen’s The Nightfly. Thusly, as delivered over the warm and even waves of FM—with no static at all—“IGY” will always be the perfect radio song for me. I will always be chasing that idealized wheel in space while there’s time.

So here are Fagen’s complete non-Dan recordings, which mark more than a perfectionist’s in-between period, circa 1982-2003. Comprising three albums, these are far more than simple solo records from the guy behind the impervious studio brilliance of one of the 1970s’ greatest music machines. Again, Nightfly is the unadulterated bit of greatness here, perhaps the Steely Dan album that never was, perfectly executed for the Reagan era. It’s a concept piece executed with stoic, sheened brilliance and caught up in retro-future Cold War concepts that bank on a bright future’s promises. And, naturally, the music is right on. Fagen’s celebrates a “New Frontier” in a post-modern refiguring of Basie and Ellington via his unmatched, coldly precise panache and remarkable hipster cool. He didn’t even need old running buddy Walter Becker—or, at least, not until Kamakiriad, when he brought Becker in to produce another retro-futurist soul record, this time focusing on the limitless possibilities of a dream car. It was hard not hear the Steely Dan there, as, once again, Fagen and Becker had their shit correct in a sly, cold and funky record highlighted by numbers like “Trans-Island Highway” and “Tomorrow’s Girls.”

Flash onward a decade to Fagen as an undeniably middle-aged dude suffering from post-9/11 despair and the loss of his beloved mother to Alzheimer’s for Morph the Cat. Time had passed—and he had even realigned with Becker as the Dan—but clearly Fagen was still a major dude to the T and had lost little of his wisenheimer wit or charm. It’s all here across seven discs, complete with state-of-the-art MVI discs loaded with interactive features and bonuses. Even in reissue mode, Fagen is ahead of the game. The new frontier is his for the taking. Enjoy it.