Steely Dan’s ‘Katy Lied’ Getting Long-Awaited Vinyl Reissue
The band’s 1975 album returns to vinyl for the first time in over 40 years.
Katy Lied is coming back to vinyl. Steely Dan’s 1975 LP will be available in the LP format for the first time in over 40 years thanks to a new reissue coming this winter.
Due out Jan. 31, the Katy Lied reissue is the latest installment in Geffen and UMe’s campaign repressing the band’s classic ABC and MCA Records catalog, a program personally overseen by founding member Donald Fagen. The series, comprising the band’s first seven albums, began in 2022 with Can’t Buy A Thrill and will conclude with The Royal Scam.
The jazzy and exploratory Katy Lied features fan favorites such as “Black Friday,” “Bad Sneakers,” and “Doctor Wu.” It was the first Steely Dan album after the departure of guitarist Jeff “Skunk” Baxter and drummer Jim Hodder as core duo Donald Fagen and Walter Becker’s opted to cease touring and focus on studio work. In a 2019 retrospective, Pitchfork enthused, “It captures Steely Dan in the thick of it all, still hungry and energized by their early burst of creativity but not taking anything for granted. Before Katy Lied, Steely Dan were a rock band, but this is the record where they became something else.”
Multiple versions of the reissue will be available. Bernie Grundman remastered Katy Lied from the original analog tapes for release as a limited edition premium 45 RPM version of the album on Ultra High-Quality Vinyl. That version is coming via Analogue Productions, the audiophile in-house reissue label of Acoustic Sounds, which is also releasing the Steely Dan reissue series on Super Audio CD. Joe Nino-Hernes remastered the 33 1/3 RPM 180-gram vinyl version at Sterling Sound from high-resolution digital files. The album will be packaged with reproductions of the original artwork.
