the sound of outmoded gear and left their tracks lean. Naysayers criticize dance music as anonymous product, but here was dance music that slyly celebrated its own anonymity and production.
Since then, we've seen an explosion of much-maligned market-driven music: teen pop that's as nourishing as an oil rag and rappers yelling like angry landlords over Mattel beats. But on Daft Punk's second album, Discovery, the duo suggests that commodification has its positive side: that a really enormous song, a piece of invincible product like, say, Cher's "Believe," is as finely crafted as any obscure dance opus or underground hip-hop track. And unlike with many modern rock songs, there is no self-defeatism in "Believe." It is a song that drinks from the well of house music, and house at its best is like a church the size of Monaco. You go inside there and you prostrate yourself before something that's not yours alone.
Daft Punk's new single, "One More Time," is that kind of song: a piece of superreligion with an invincible beat and a nailed-to-the-wall vocal by house singer Romanthony. It is stamina itself, an anthem to "keep on dancing" that's already a huge hit in clubs and on the radio. All those knowing listeners who bought Homework and signed on for the pair's rascally, nudge-wink grooves now have to figure out what part of "One More Time" is for them. Is there a subversive part of "One More Time"? If so, where does it begin?
In its sheer perfection, is my best guess. This is the moment when the indie sensibility implodes before our eyes: when prank-pulling weirdos, young Frenchmen who hire director Spike Jonze to put dog-people in their videos, try to make honest-to-god hits. Struggling to understand the song, you find yourself analyzing Romanthony's vocoderized singing - the way he overenunciates words, like "tonigh-tah." It's overkill, maybe. Overkill is parody; that's Daft Punk. But is it generous, Cher-level overkill or the overkill of a smirking weenie? C'est les deux. And now you must give up thinking about it, because they're playing these docteurs du funk at McDonald's.
Discovery helps you get your mainstream on but only for its first half. The songs that grab you are loaded up front. The momentum of "One More Time," the album's first track, continues through "Digital Love" - a shameless bite of the Buggles' Eighties synth boogie - and rolls up to "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger," which is Euro dance music at its absolute best: hand claps, a clanking ride cymbal, funky stabs on the Fender Rhodes, vocoder and all. The first five songs are the work of a real band, Daft Punk, whoever th
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