Musical Memories

Daft Punk may have served up their entry for "song of the summer" months ago, but I only recently got around to listening to their newest album, Random Access Memories. Said song, "Get Lucky," is buried deep in the album at track 8 (for those few who even listen to albums straight through anymore), amid a collection of hit and miss songs.

There's a strong disco vibe playing throughout the album. In addition to the ubiquitous "Get Lucky," other tracks like "Give Life Back to Music" and "Lose Yourself to Dance" seem very specifically crafted to evoke disco. Only Daft Punk's signature use of vocoder would give you any indication these songs weren't recorded in the 70s. (Not many besides Peter Frampton were using it then.) Those tracks are among the most appealing (and certainly the most catchy) on the album.

The rest of the album gives in to the cliche excesses of techno music, and is far less enjoyable for it. "Giorgio by Moroder" is a prime example of what I mean -- there are interesting musical hooks there, but they don't kick in until after a minutes-long sampled interview plays; more snippets of the interview intrude on the rest of the song's seemlingly unending 9 minutes. "Touch" eventually coalesces into a relaxing, atmospheric song... but only after two minutes of obnoxious tinkering with a spoken intro processed every possible way it can be through a vocoder. The album's finale, "Contact," is the most obnoxious of all. It's one third actual song, one third recording of an astronaut recounting a UFO encounter or something, and one third shrill burst of static that intensifies in decibels and frequency until you literally cannot endure listening one second longer.

Even the signature track, "Get Lucky," isn't immune to some of these techno excesses. The album version of the song lasts an unnecessarily long six minutes, with the chorus sometimes repeated three times where one is plenty in the radio edit. Daft Punk simply doesn't play with variation enough to justify the repetition, which is part of why I've found some of the covers of their song to be more appealing than the original.

But there are a few tracks where the indulgence does come together well. Besides the disco-influenced tracks I've already mentioned, there's "Beyond," a slow jam track with a powerful orchestral opening. There's also "Doin' It Right," which contrasts its excessive processed vocals with an intriguingly sparse instrumentation.

Overall though, this is one album you have to cherry pick heavily. For every decent track, there's a terrible one. I give Random Access Memories a C.