Steely Dan had released an album every year between 1972 and 1977, but took three years to release the follow-up to Aja, the band's masterpiece.

The first reason for the delay is that Walter Becker and Donald Fagen felt creatively and emotionally exhausted after recording Aja, feeling it was their peak. Second, a contractual dispute erupted with MCA Records, which had just purchased ABC and wanted to raise prices on their albums, to which Steely Dan objected. Third, Becker was in a car crash around this time, and finally, a technician fell asleep on the job and erased a legendary song called "The Second Arrangement," believed by some to be one of the group's best songs.

Of course, at this time, the band had become commercially popular as well as despised by the punks, who saw the pristine production, over-rehearsal and lack of soul as reasons why music in general needed an overhaul.

All of this shows on Gaucho, the final album and creative nadir of the original Steely Dan run. This is a tired album, the music of a seductive jazz nightclub that has long since been passed by. Yet it retains the immaculate production of all Steely Dan albums -- so precise, in fact, that the songs really have little soul or enjoyable moments. If Aja was the relationship album, Gaucho is the breakup record.

The first two songs are the best. "Hey Nineteen" is deceptively happy, with minimal keyboard work and a jazzy beat that drives the song. It's rare that a Dan song used so little to achieve so much, but this spare approach works (except in the chorus, which piles on the vocal effects, but even those are well done). "Babylon Sisters" has a lazy charm, tossing in the ever-present female backup singers and adding a little twist to each chorus to keep it interesting.

"Glamour Profession" is the obligatory Steely Dan drug song, a jaunty number that goes on a bit too long, though Becker offers some excellent bass work. The title track sounds like the theme to an 80's TV show and, while decent, sounds like the standard Dan song. "My Rival" and "Third World Man" are the same -- good ideas, but lacking the flair of the Dan's previous work (although the former has some great guitar work). Never mind that this won a Grammy for Best Engineered Record -- production only gets you so far.

"Time Out Of Mind," the other song (there are only seven), is notable for a Mark Knopfler solo and its upbeat tone. But the album as a whole showcases the end of an era -- it's too ironic, too detached, too subdued to rank above lounge act music as a whole. In small doses it works, but played in the background it won't necessarily strike a chord (except "Hey Nineteen").

Still, it's the only time Fagen and Becker slipped up. They showed us they were human, after all, instead of relying on their characters to take the fall.