Alive 2007

A Daft Punk live album loses some of the essential experience: the robot costumes, the giant glowing pyramid, the sweaty bodies next to you. And the drugs, definitely the drugs. But the whoops of the human-after-all audience add plenty to the French filter-disco duo's surprisingly consistent career-spanning show. The set leans too heavy on their proggy recent work, but it's still basically a celestial rave tribute to Chic's Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, cut with classic Eurodisco and Roxy Music. "One More Time" still sounds unbearably pompous, proof that robots should never get sincere. But the knockout punch is the final medley of "Superheroes," "Human After All" and "Rock 'N' Roll," as Thomas Bangalter and Guy Manuel de Homem-Christo shoot a Barry Manilow sample over the crowd like they're sprinkling holy water. This is the first-rate live album that Electric Light Orchestra should have made but never did.