Ask me about my favourite record and I’ll tell you it’s The Nightfly (1982) by ex-Steely Dan frontman Donald Fagan. I know that this is not a cool choice. A friend once said that Steely Dan, with their jazzy cynicism, were like cilantro: you either loved or hated them. Most of the people I knew considered them hideous Dad Rock Men who dominated the Ovaltine-bland A.M. airwaves. For this reason, I have kept my love a deep secret, while bristling with pleasure when “Peg” or “Hey Nineteen” comes on the car radio or slipping on the woozy, urbane Aja when no-one is home and all I want to do is gaze slack-mouthed out the window. But The Nightfly trumps them all.
The base album concept: a geeky teenager in the New Jersey suburbs at the height (or nadir) of the Cold War writhes in the toils of frustration and fantasy. Technology offers glamour and escape, as in “I.G.Y”, where a high-speed undersea “train all graphite and glitter” links New York and Paris. The marimba-laced “The Goodbye Look” is a coy noir escapade. “New Frontier” (accompanied by a dreamy, neon-hued video) ratchets things up a notch by envisioning an off-duty nuclear bomb shelter as a site of hedonism and the sharing of confidences:
Let’s pretend that it’s the real thing
And stay together all night long
And when I really get to know you
We’ll open up the doors and climb into the dawn
If only! My Nuclear Threat Eighties were dominated by news reports, doomsday clocks, watching Threads (melting milk bottles and mutant babies) on CKVU en famille, and wondering how the hell people would fit into shelters with all those shoulder pads and huge perms.
I was also an outsider who dreamed of Getting Out. Vancouver was no Kendall Park, but I had a) bossy parents and b) bullies. When, in “Maxine”, Fagen promised his sweetheart “We’ll move up to Manhattan/ And fill the place with friends”, I sensed that my people were out there, in East Village walk-ups, at highway turn-offs, in hidden bunkers, or at the ends of the airwaves. For at the heart of The Nightfly is the concept of the radio. Late-night radio in particular. As a kid and then later as an adult (jet lag-muddled or humouring a new baby), the idea that someone else was awake at an ungodly hour and reaching out through music and languid, meandering talk sent up an alert. In the case of The Nightfly’s title track, the DJ is not a star or an oracle but a jilted lover in mid-meltdown:
I’ve got plenty of java
And Chesterfield Kings
But I feel like crying
I wish I had a heart of ice
Things move in cycles. The book I’m working on now is about nocturnal people—in mid-meltdown but also foraging for joy before “the sun comes through the skylight.” Cool or not, The Nightfly brought me here.
— Alexandra Oliver was born in Vancouver. Her debut collection Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway won the 2014 Pat Lowther Memorial Award and her most recent collection, Hail, the Invisible Watchman, was listed as a CBC Best Poetry Book of 2022. She holds a PhD in English from McMaster University.
You can read Alexandra Oliver’s poetry in Issue 306 (Winter 2026). Order the issue now!
Order Issue 306 - Winter 2026 (Canadian Addresses)
Order Issue 306 - Winter 2026 (International Addresses)
