[5] The album marked the beginning of Becker and Fagen's roles as the principal members of Steely Dan, and the pair enlisted prominent Los Angeles-based studio musicians to record numerous overdubs.

[1] Pretzel Logic contains shorter songs and fewer instrumental jams than Steely Dan's previous album, Countdown to Ecstasy (1973),[7] as the group had decided to attempt to produce complete musical statements within the three-minute pop-song format.

"[8] Baxter's guitar playing drew on jazz and rock and roll influences, and on the instrumental cover of Duke Ellington's "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo", he recreates a classic Tricky Sam Nanton trombone solo on pedal steel.

[5] Victor Feldman played a flapamba solo to introduce the song "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" on the album, but this intro was removed from the single release upon orders from Geffen Records.

[9] Bud Scoppa of Rolling Stone magazine called the album's "wonderfully fluid ensemble sound" unprecedented in popular music, and said the ambiguous lyrics "create an emotionally charged atmosphere, and the best are quite affecting.

[29] Christgau, who created the Pazz & Jop, ranked Pretzel Logic number one on his own year-end list,[30] and later wrote that the album encapsulated Steely Dan's "chewy perversity as aptly as its title", with vocals by Fagen that "seem like the golden mean of pop ensemble singing, stripped of histrionics and displays of technique, almost [...] sincere, modest.

"[8] In The All-Music Guide to Rock (1995), Rick Clark gave the album five stars out of five and wrote that, "On Pretzel Logic Steely Dan most successfully synthesized their love for jazz into their dense pop/rock sound.

"[7] Patrick McKay of Stylus Magazine called the album "superb", and noted that it found Becker and Fagen "relying instead on crack studio musicians that could realize their increasingly complex compositions".