Daft Punk - Alive 2007

You might not expect the crunchy, razor-precise productions of Daft Punk to translate well into a live recording, especially given the programmed nature of the music, but with this tour album (the recording of a full show in Paris) they manage to avoid the pitfalls of boomy sound and predictability. Daft Punk specializes in funky hooks, robot sounds and four-on-the-floor beats, especially on their excellent first two albums, "Homework" and "Discovery". I never really got into their third, "Human After All," as much, because it goes for more of a hard rock sound (while still being Daft Punk). But here I start to see where they're coming from. In live performance, having every bass thump hit like a crushing power chord is just way more powerful. Every time you think the energy could not possibly get any higher, it does. Every time I listen to the album I want to turn the volume up another click or two every two minutes or so. And it certainly doesn't hurt that the crowd is going absolutely apeshit from beginning to end. The album plays like a Daft Punk megamix, weaving all their many hits into each other in ways we usually don't expect. Lots of songs are sped up considerably, not only for the purpose of cramming more of them into the 70-minute playing time but also just to add that much more urgency. Funky disco basslines like "Burnin'" and "Around the World" are turned into crushing fist-pumping anthems. Talkbox/vocoder masterpieces like "Around the World", "Harder Better Faster Stronger" and "Television Rules the Nation" are turned into different elements in the same massive adrenaline rush. Squeak and squawk blasts like "Rock N Roll" and "Rollin and Scratchin" are minimized in annoyingness by being turned into one. And the biggest downfall of Daft Punk's studio work - that you might not want to listen to the same 2 bars 164 times in a row - is circumvented because no song plays for very long before elements of another are rammed into it sideways. I have only one complaint: the song "Too Long" (one of the most apt titles in music history) is thankfully not included in its entirety, but elements from the outro crop into the mix at probably five different points, and for what seems like five minutes each time. If they'd filled that time with "Revolution 909," "High Fidelity," "High Life" or "Musique" (or all the above) I would have been happier. But hey, that's a small complaint. If you have to own only one Daft Punk album (and I'd feel sorry for you if you had only one) this is probably the one to get. But go ahead and get em all.