"gobbling antidepressants" and nearly unable to get through each day. He came to view The Nightfly as the culmination of "whatever kind of energy was behind the writing I had been doing in the '70s." He turned down requests for television performances, opting only for radio and press interviews. Though he suggested he may do smaller concerts in New York, Fagen did not tour behind The Nightfly. He expounded upon his mental state after the album's completion: In 2006, Fagen maintained that "I haven't listened to The Nightfly since I made it." Since resuming as a touring band in 1993, Steely Dan has performed several songs from The Nightfly on occasion; Fagen also did as a solo artist during a 2006 tour in support of his third solo album, Morph the Cat. Most recently, Steely Dan — now with Fagen as the sole original member following Walter Becker's death in 2017 — performed The Nightfly in its entirety at the Beacon Theatre in New York City, and Orpheum Theater in Boston, Massachusetts, in 2019. An official live recording compiled from these performances, "Donald Fagen's The Nightfly Live," was released in 2021. Critical reception The Nightfly was met with almost universally positive reviews. Billboard labeled it their top album pick in the first month of its release, calling it a "stunning debut" and praising its "typically blue chip crew of crack players and crisp digital production." David Fricke wrote in Rolling Stone that "Donald Fagen conjures a world where all things are possible, even to a kid locked in his bedroom." Robert Christgau, writing for The Village Voice, gave the album an A and commented, "these songs are among Fagen's finest [...] his acutely shaded lyrics put the jazziest music he's ever committed to vinyl into a context that like everything here is loving but very clear-eyed." Robert Palmer of The New York Times called it a "vivid and frequently ingenious look back at a world that is gone forever. Its sound is glossy and contemporary, but references to both the spirit and the music of the years when Mr. Fagen was growing up can be found in almost every song." Charles Shaar Murray of NME called The Nightfly "an album which doesn't so much dilute the arctic smartassery of the Dan as warm it up, loosen it up, and present it in a new context." The sole poor review came