295. Daft Punk, "Random Access Memories"

 


You cannot kill disco, you can only make it stronger and angrier.  On this album, EDM superstars Daft Punk turned their icy gaze to one of the most unfairly maligned genres in music.  The result is a fantastic sounding album, but I don't know if the songs entirely work for me.  

The first thing you notice is that the music sounds live - like I was listening and I thought "this can't be a drum machine, it sounds too real" - and turns out DP brought in studio musicians to record a lot of it.  There's a lot of vocoder, of course, although blessedly 70's songwriting icon Paul Williams gets to sing "Touch," which he co-wrote, in his own voice.  Guess who else shows up?  Our Strokes buddy Julian Casablancas, singing unrecognizably altered vocals on "Instant Crush."  It occurs to me that the Strokes could rockify that song and it would be better than a lot of the Strokes' later catalogue.

Of course you are aware of "Get Lucky," which was absolutely everywhere in the summer of 2013.  When I first started reading about it (before I actually heard of it), I could only think of the Heatmiser song "Get Lucky" which is, um, a different song in every way.  But DP's "Get Lucky" has plenty to recommend it as well.  Infectiously bouncy, great vocal by Pharrell Williams, sparkling production.  Nile Rodgers played the guitar part, which DP liked so much that they then re-recorded everything else around it.

In fact, this whole album just sounds amazing.  It's crystal clear and bright and shiny and crisp.  That being said, I can't see listening to it a ton.  It's great and I'm sure people love it, it's just not for me, I guess.

Also, there should ABSOLUTELY be a DP album in the Top 500 but this one?  I'm not sure.  Maybe our old pal recency bias acting up again.

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? Maybe not? 

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