Review: Daft Punk

Daft Punk
““Discovery””
(Virgin)

The first sixty seconds of ‘One More Time,’ the new Daft Punk single, are genuinely astonishing.  The French duo have apparently stolen the vocoders Cher used on ‘Believe.’ They pair the resulting, unlikely vocals with lyrics straight outta Madonna’s early-80s book: ‘One more time we’re gonna celebrate/Oh yeah all night don’t stop the dancing.’  It only gets better.  Agonized background grunting is woven into a mix of music cribbed straight from a 70’s gay porn soundtrack.  House singer Romanthony over-enunciates everything: ‘Tonigh-tah, just feeeeeeling.’  ‘Aerodynamic’ has some weird guitar riffs that never go anywhere.  ‘Digital Love’ shamelessly steals from the Buggles’ fifteen minutes.  ‘Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger,’ continues in much the same vein, borrowing from Radiohead more than just the title, and making an awful mess of it.  After that, it all goes downhill.  Eventually, the vocoders are abandoned, and the last few songs feature soulful, boring paeans to well, who knows, but they sure do sound sincere.  The last track, ‘Too Long,’’ is, truly, too long, topping out at just under ten minutes.  Also, it features old-school Michael-Jackson-style shouts of ‘Can you feel it?’  In France, “One More Time” debuted at Number One, the first time a single has debuted at the top of the French chart since Elton John’s 1997 tribute to Princess Diana, “Candle In The Wind (Goodbye England’s Rose).  No further comment is necessary.