Daft Punk - Random Access Memories

Here we go...

I think my feelings for this album are best described by my real-time reactions to track 1, "Give Life Back to Music". Follow along won't you?

0:00 - What the fuck is this corny ass guitar intro? This is awful.
0:19 - Oh shit, this is an awesome groove. I immediately forgive whatever hell that was at the beginning.
0:50 - VOCODER! I love this so hard! And the melody is pretty good too!
1:23 - Shit is ON! This guitar is fawnkay!
1:55 - Oh. The guitar interlude thing is back. Why. I was jamming.
2:11 - And we're back! Give life back to music! Yeah!
3:00 - Gah. This corny interlude is so out of place and so... bad.
3:16 - Oh yeah! Sounds of people partying. I'm partying. Are you partying? Let's party. I just hope that interlude doesn't come back...
4:15 - Fade out, because this groove will go on forever...

[fin]

Did you pick up on the theme? It was pretty subtle.

This theme of "aw yeah" right alongside of "please stahp" continues consistently throughout the whole album. And it's not like on most albums, where you have songs you want to skip. It's all jumbled up into each song so you have to sit through the bad stuff to get to the good. Thankfully there are some songs ("Instant Crush") that are 100% bad and you can skip those, but conversely there are no 100% great songs that you want to skip to. The strings on "Giorgio by Moroder" are cinematic, the vocoder on "Lose Yourself to Dance" is awesome, the piano and guitar interplay on "Fragments of Time" is really smooth, but each of these songs are ruined by another element. The exhaustingly repetitive synth line on "Giorgio by Moroder", the funeral march pace and lifeless vocals on "Lose Yourself to Dance", and the guy-next-door vocals from Todd Edwards on "Fragments of Time".

Really, all of the guest vocals are pretty bad on this album. When either Guy or Thomas sing through the vocoder, it ironically adds an emotional element that is missing from everyone else's vocal takes.

There are probably two songs I will return to after this week: "Give Life Back to Music" and "Doin' it Right". "Doin' it Right" has my favorite vocal contribution, and the one I was looking forward to the least. Panda Bear just doesn't seem like a good fit within Daft Punk's aesthetic, but this song really surprised me. I will say that the song really feels like the longest intro ever and at the end I am like "NOW LET THE BEAT DROP!" but the song is just over.

Which kind of brings me to my next takeaway: Daft Punk's next tour is going to be AMAZING. Each one of these songs sounds unfinished, almost as if they designed these songs to be sampled again by themselves on their next tour. These songs will really come alive with a 4-on-the-floor dance beat. Just think, Human After All supplied the foundation for some of the best moments on Alive 2007, but was really nothing spectacular on its own...

So, I probably won't be returning to Random Access Memories very often. But you can bet I'll be the first one buying tickets for their next tour.

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