#886 Daft Punk - Random Access Memories

What's the value of a boring album?

Look, I like lots of boring music. Boring music can be hypnotic, evocative, transportative in ways wholly unreachable by music with pesky things like memorable moments, relatable sentiments or propulsive percussion. And this album has strikingly few of those. So is it any good, those handicaps notwithstanding?

Well, for one, it is pretty, even transportative at times. Heck, at times it seems brilliant, whipping styles and tones and instruments into a disco-flecked space-rock opus with echoes of French albums from Moon Safari to Hurry Up, We're Dreaming (and even Bankrupt!) hinting at themes and veering off with a mind of its own into starlit crannies. Giorgio by Moroder in particular just might be a classic, with perfectly executed vocal interludes outlining the song's two halves: an infectious synth hook played over a solid click beat complete with organ solo...into a vocal interlude... then that same synth hook roars back again, this time over a sparking live drum counterpoint, complete with hip hop scratches. It's the mission statement of the entire album: laying out the two sides of the electronic / rock coin, and casting disco as their ambassador. It's a masterpiece overflowing with ideas and hooks. But nothing else here lives up to it.

Really, only lead single Get Lucky even comes close: at least it makes you want to move, and that's surely the song you'll remember on this otherwise featureless journey. For an album packed with ideas, none of them really manage to stand out. Too often the soup of styles, the combination of all those reds and blues and greens, just turns out turgid grey, with songs dressed up with nowhere to go, like soundtrack outtakes, like Jamiroquia b-sides. It's the worst during the disastrous Beyond / Motherboard / Fragments of Time stretch, which manages to neither be interesting nor to even be inoffensive enough to fade into the background, each song laden with misguided strings or vocals.

There's something compelling about the album. Something that makes you want to listen, that compels you to try. There's clearly a voice here, little asides, little subtle gestures that draw you in, and you strain to listen, but it talks so slowly and it talks so much and it says so little that eventually you're just bored. And only occasionally in a good way 3/5