Released in 1974, Pretzel Logic marked the pivot point between the touring band Steely Dan had been and the studio-born project they became. The album is a rejection of the 1960s ideal of a rock band as a small group of like-minded people collectively expressing their creativity through their own original material. Instead, Steely Dan embraced what co-founder Donald Fagen later described as the “scrupulous meritocracy” of the big-band era—a time in which bandleaders hired whomever served the song best. Steely Dan adopted that approach, and threw in some characteristic ruthlessness for color. The result was Pretzel Logic, a succinct sucker-punch of an album that embodied the philosophy Steely Dan had espoused in songs like “Barrytown” or “Through With Buzz”: To hell with feeling—they were embracing the machine. And, boy—does the knife gleam on Pretzel Logic. Even the album’s comforting moments—“Any Major Dude Will Tell You” and the eternal “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number”—are haunted by the sense of something withheld or unsaid. Here were the mysteries of old pulp fiction and detective stories, combined with the fragmented thinking of acid burnouts and conspiracy theorists trying to make sense of an increasingly nonsensical world—or, in Steely Dan’s case, Southern California. That’s where Fagen and his partner Walter Becker had been living while working on Pretzel Logic.“It turned out the sunny clime and prefab cookie-cutter robo-culture in which we now found ourselves only served to heighten our paranoia and alienation,” the duo later wrote. “We had our songs, some nice axes, good girlfriends, brand-new drivers’ licenses, lots of 24-track studio time, and a warm place to compose. In other words, Miles was in heaven and all was right in the world.” Steely Dan would get darker (The Royal Scam) and colder, too (Gaucho), but Pretzel Logic strikes the balance between the classic-rock guys your parents and grandparents loved, and the insular creeps who lurked underneath.