*** Steely Dan

TWO AGAINST NATURE

(Warner Bros.)

It's refreshing that Steely Dan have a small controversy flap going over the current single "Cousin Dupree." Yep, this tale of an aging rocker's lust for his young cousin is sordid and slightly offensive. It's also funny as hell, delivered with a hip swagger that's wonderfully ill-suited to the come-ons in the lyric. And for a band who once wrote a love song that included the line "I may never walk again," it's entirely in character.

So is the rest of the album. In terms of style and continuity, it could have been released any time during the 20 years since Gaucho and would have still sounded like a step forward. The band's obsession with studio craft hasn't lessened: listening to the austere arrangements here, you could easily believe the reports that they spend the first two years of each album just getting a drum sound. But this one swings in a way that the last couple of Steely Dan albums didn't. The title track is the closest they've ever gotten to funk, and Walter Becker's guitar solos suggest he's been listening to the Meters (they've jettisoned the metal dude who played guitar on the '90s tours). And their sensibility is more twisted now than it was originally: "Gaslighting Abby" is a jolly tune about a guy and his new girlfriend's efforts to freak out his ex; "What a Shame About Me" could be the hero of "Deacon Blues" after 20 years and even less success. Still, the closing "West of Hollywood" ranks as one of the first truly joyful moments in the Steely Dan catalogue -- unless the irony is so subtle that nobody's caught it yet.

-- Brett Milano