Daft Punk - Human After All

(malfunctioning armpits)

I like this statement.

But yeah I was very depressed and then I woke up today and someone told me Daft Punk had leaked...the best thing that could have happened, really!

I'll ask again here, is this in reference to my comments on the Simon Reynolds thread?

If Homework sounded like a group that had 10 weeks to write, record, and finalize an album, and if Discovery sounded like a group that had 10 months to write, record, and finalize an album, Human After All sounds like a group that had 10 DAYS to write, record, and finalize an album.

In other words: "eh. decided to do a bunt instead of a glam slam I see."

It also sounds like Daft Punk somehow immersed themselves into a lot of older stoner/classic rock before they went into this project. Also, did no one else note the "The Brainwasher"/Sabbath "Iron Man" parallel? These aren't criticisms.. just musings and observations.

Most strikingly, with the exception of "Robot Rock" and "Technologic" (and I never thought I'd be making this exception for "Robot Rock"), this is a rather dance-less album. A lot of humming, bass, and pulsing, and dark vocoding, but nothing that matches the previous two albums as a source of providing dance floor anthems. Again, not necessarily a criticism, just an observation.

I don't see the New Beat/industrial comparisons though. "The Brainwasher" sounds dark, indeed, but at least the former genre implies some sort of beat and drive, and this song scurries and plods along very creepily, but doesn't, you know, hit it.

The most disappointing elements are the sameyness in the heavily phased low frequency square wave synths used in almost every song, and that these tracks were done live. That last part is purely an opinion.. sure, it's cool that Human After All sounds like the most reproduceable album live and all (rockists celebrate!), but I was hoping for something that would elevate even higher than Discovery for the followup, like Nirvana or something.. (yup, I was stung by high expectations, and I admit it.)

I can already smell the ending sentence paraphrased in EVERY goddamned review that's going to slag this album in the next month:

"Daft Punk has destroyed the dream that Discovery promised, proving they are, indeed, Human After All -- if only for the better"

That said, this isn't a bad album in the larger scope of things. Just bad for Daft Punk.

But I'll also say that I bet the A-Frames' Black Forest album is going to stimulate the "robot rock" vibe, albeit in a much different way, far more effectively than this album seems to (try to) do.

Also, I'm noting this:

I was hoping for something that would elevate even higher than Discovery for the followup, like Nirvana or something.. (yup, I was stung by high expectations, and I admit it.)

I sorta find this an interesting conflation -- namely, a hint that the album needed to be even more, for lack of a better phrase, detailed and/or grandiose than before in order to succeed. Am I however reading that wrong? It seems like a strange expectation to place on a band -- heck, any band.

Kevin Shields to thread.

I really do have to go now...laterz

Maybe Daft Punk decided to just nip that expectation in the bud, instead of following Axl Roses' and Kevin Shields' retreat into hermitdom... probably a wiser move than nothing at all.

I think the wiser move would have been to pair down this album into a single two-track AA single.. "Robot Rock"/"Technologic"... (granted, the two really dancey tracks)

Eh, but you could say that about any number of people, the idea of fan expectation vs. whatever the hell the musicians felt like doing. Not all, mind you, which calls to mind an interesting question of what musicians do things you mentally feel create a comfort zone for you that you don't need more of in the way of 'change' versus those you invest some sorta sense of 'progress' from -- when it's more likely that you'll get the latter quality out of nowhere or from an unexpected source instead of whoever or whatever you've burdened your expectations with.

No doubt! I've been disappointed by albums only to come back to them later and discover their good points after hearing the artist(s)' subsequent work, whether that work was better or worse.