.
http://www.rollingstone.com/assets/images/album_review/db660079a7d66ca0bb2c69b4abf0632202cf6ad0.jpg Human After All

Daft Punk

Human After All

Rolling Stone: star rating
Community: star rating
5 2.5 0
April 8, 2009

In Daft Punk's 2003 animated movie Interstella 5555: The 5tory of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem, the French electronic twosome turned its 2001 album Discovery into a retro-futurist parable about an outer-space rock band exploited by evil record-company earthlings. Now Daft Punk are taking the next aesthetic step: Human After All is a concept album about technology and how it threatens to turn us all into robots. Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo exaggerate their band's own robotic tendencies here, much to the detriment of its grooves. Downplaying disco in favor of deliberately cheesy Eighties rock, the duo mostly repeats rather than elaborates its riffs. Although cuts like "Robot Rock" begin with promising processed-guitar motifs, nothing builds to achieve the prior glories of "Da Funk" or "One More Time." Daft Punk may have become the victim of their own animatronic satire.

prev
Album Review Main Next

ADD A COMMENT

Community Guidelines »
loading comments

loading comments...

COMMENTS

Sort by:
    Read More

    Music Reviews

    • star rating
      Watching Movies With the Sound Off
    • star rating
      Omens
    • star rating
      Walking on Air
    more Reviews »
    Daily Newsletter

    Get the latest RS news in your inbox.

    Sign up to receive the Rolling Stone newsletter and special offers from RS and its
    marketing partners.

    X

    We may use your e-mail address to send you the newsletter and offers that may interest you, on behalf of Rolling Stone and its partners. For more information please read our Privacy Policy.

    Song Stories

    “Everyday People”

    Sly and the Family Stone | 1968

    "Everyday People" managed to trailblaze in two different ways -- it was one of the first pop hits to deal with the subject of racial harmony, and it utilized Larry Graham's "slap" technique on the bass guitar, which would soon be copied by countless other bassists. Graham once said about his pulsating style, "I'd never done that before … that's where the freedom of creativity came in for the band, that we'd be allowed to do that." In 1978, the song's line "Different strokes for different folks" would be borrowed for the title of the hit television show Diff'rent Strokes.

    More Song Stories entries »