#3 Discovery

It was going to happen eventually that I was going to come across an album that I had not yet heard, and indeed an album to whose genre I am not at all particularly endeared. One thing that annoys me about other reviews is when they say something along the lines of “It is good taken in the context of its genre”, they basically mean that is just less shit than other albums that just sound the same. I refuse to buy into that method of labeling.

Having said that, I was surprised how much I enjoyed Discovery. It is not something I would have listened to save for this self imposed project and all I really knew was One More Time from watching Rage when I was younger and, of course, Daft Hands.

Not only is the album catchy as hell, but there is a whole bunch of interesting/cool stuff going on. For example, Aerodynamic and Veridis Quo have the sort of layering I find impossible to dislike or be cynical about in any way. As somewhat of a segue, Michel Gondry once said:

I hate cynicism. I wipe it from me. I don’t like cynical people. I don’t like cynical movies. Cynicism is very easy. You don’t have to justify it. You don’t have to fight for it.

I really like this quote and the reason I bring it up is twofold; one of Michel’s more salient works is a Daft Punk film clip and the other is I don’t think that this album can be approached from the cynicism that was automatic for me at the prospect. (Jay Z’s album is soon on my list so I will have to work really hard to overcome that :/ ) To do so will be to miss out on how lovely Digital Love and Something About Us are. I love that with all of the tools and complexity enabled by electronic music, Daft Punk have been able to keep things simple and beautiful in so many places.

Another thing that surprised me about the album is how inoffensive it is, while there is some distortion of voices, it is all done for effect and never feels out of place. Often the ‘distortion’ is to make them sound pure and sincere. I suspect that my finding it so normal on a listening now speaks to how ubiquitous their distinctive style is.

Now that I have gushed about all the things I loved about it, I have a couple things to mention that were less attractive to me. There are a lot of songs on there and it severely stretched my attention span. I really like the beginning of the album but it really trails off in the mid sections and the end to me. I can’t point to specific songs that I dislike, but neither can I point to many songs that I connect song with title in the second half, it felt like they all bled into each other. All in all, I was really glad I have this a listen and, depending on mood, it may get more plays (or at least some songs).