1. Down In The Bottom
2. Junkie Girl
3. Surf And/Or Die
4. Book of Liars
5. Lucky Henry
6. Hard Up Case
7. Cringemaker
8. Girlfriend
9. My Waterloo
10. This Moody Bastard
11. Hat Too Flat
12. Little Kawai
13. Medical Science (Japanese Bonus Track)
Produced by Walter Becker & Donald Fagen
All songs by Walter Becker
Except Cringemaker by Walter Becker & Dean Parks
Lyrics , credits at this page on Official Walter Becker
When I was ten years younger, aka a teenager, I didn't even really factor Walter's solo work into Steely's output. His sound/voice didn't really interest me. I've got no idea why. What changed me was hearing Slang of Ages on Everything Must Go. Seeing how cool and laid back he sounded on that track really made me warm up to his voice. Still, it took revisiting the Steely catalog in my twenties to buy a Walter album, and that was this one.
I really dig that kind of cynical jazz funk vamping on some of these tracks, and as someone said, it's a successor to the cynical jazz funk vamps on the Royal Scam. I always thought of RS as Walter's albums, because it's got a similar kind of rockish aggression to it. The loud electric drums, to me, while dated, kind of make me think of the back cover with the broken glass. The "Whack" so to speak is Walter's punching you in the head over and over again with his drums. It's as close as Steely Dan ever got to a "grunge" album.
I full agree with the analogy that Walter is Lennon and Fagan is McCartney. Kamikariad is a naughty and introspective, yet smooth, melodic and futuristic flight of fancy, while Tracks of Whack is Walter wrestling with his demons in a way similar to Don't Take Me Alive. At least to me