My Amazon Reviews: Daft Punk "Random Access Memories"

The Tin Men Find Their Hearts
4 Out Of 5 Stars

Talk about a departure. "Random Access Memories" retros the old EDM sound of previous albums and plants its flag squarely in the heart of 70's disco. So much so that Giorgio Morodor and Nile Rodgers are here in the flesh. Modern popster Pharrell Williams and Julian Casablancas of The Strokes are on board for what is a pretty wild ride on the wayback machine. Turns out the Robots (as Pharrell kept calling Daft Punk as they racked up Grammy Awards) have a heartbeat that pulses to "Le Freak."

This is some sunny, happy poptunes. "Get Lucky" (featuring Rodgers and Pharrell) was one of the best summer jams this or any year, inescapably warm and funky. "Give Life Back To Music" rides the same kind of funkiness and uses the autotuned vocals that you'd probably expect from Daft Punk in the first place. Yet there are those cameos that reveal the true memories of the duo. "Giorgio By Morodor" has the legendary producer giving a brief biography of his creative life while Daft Punk recreates some old school Munich disco straight off of the "Midnight Express" soundtrack. (I'm of the mindset that this is one of the collabs that didn't quite work.)

But for pure seventies oddballishness, you get 70's syrup-meister Paul Williams on the crescendo-ing "Touch." Paul Who? You may ask? Williams is a 70+ songwriter who can count among his credits Barbra Streisand, Helen Reddy and Kermit the Frog among his clients. When Daft Punk went mining for that pure 70's sound that "Random Access Memories" obviously was looking for, the boys did their homework.

Pure DP fans will still find traces of their old heroes on "Memories." "Motherboard" is a strictly instrumental piece that jitters with some interesting drum lines. The "Contact" finale, a six and a half minute opus featuring DJ Falcon, uses found sound and newsbites to muse about UFO's and aliens among us. It's a rollicking space ride worthy of standing next to everything else on "Random Access Memories." Daft Punk may have done a massive shift for this album, but it's a satisfying one and may have made this their masterwork.

     

My Amazon Reviews: Depeche Mode "Delta Machine"

Welcome to the machine
4 Out Of 5 Stars

While I still enjoy their albums, there's little on Depeche Mode's "Delta Machine" that suggests that they haven't come off auto-pilot since "Ultra." They are still singing about pain, redemption, soul-pain in the search for more, and can't allot Andy Fletcher to singing one song. The devotion to destruction still rules, and analog synths are still the best thing out there.

If you're a fan, then that is all that matters. There's hints of grandness in the opening "Welcome To My World," which is a nice way of saying 'join me in my vortex.' Count the times Martin Gore sings the words 'angel,' and 'soul' (although one of them comes in the great couplet "I couldn't save your soul, I couldn't even take you home"). Alas if it were only that simple. But it is devoted DM fan, it is. They still twiddle with electronic blues ("Soothe My Soul" sounds like a muted "Personal Jesus" without the big distorted guitar, as does the equally interesting "Goodbye") and Gore and Gahan are still in fine voice after all these years.

Fans of the era where Depeche Mode filled their dark spaces with big dance beats will likely find "Delta Machine" wanting. As a long time fan, I've found things to like in almost every album they've released, and that includes the oft-derided "Exciter" (which this album reminds me of often). "Delta Machine" may be the album where the preachers are still talking about fire and brimstone, but are content with knowing that the flock no-longer needs it screamed at them. It's a quiet wonder that bears up to repeated listens.

     

My Amazon Reviews: Mika "Origin Of Love"

Dance With me Mika
3 Out Of 5 Stars

For his third album, Mika does an about face and lunges face first into dance pop. This is more a Pet Shop Boys departure than a George Michael, gilded electronically and laced with precision beats. His unique voice still stands head and shoulders above all the production and auto-tuning (hey he really didn't need this much of it, thanks), and the songs are still catchier than a tackle-box. Once again, Mika borrows heavily from the classic pop songbook; if you don't think of The Buggles during "Love You When I'm Drunk," you're missing the point.

But there's something missing, which the delightful "Lola" points out. When Mika isn't being dancified or vocoded half to death, he's a stunningly original artist. Great songs like the title track and "Make You Happy" are gossamered to the point where the beauty of what was so apparent on "Life In Cartoon Motion" and "The Boy Who Knew Too Much" is nearly buried. Mika is in a new phase of his career, and he still excels. Just be prepared that, if you're coming off those first two albums, "Origin Of Love" is a different animal entirely.

     

My Amazon Reviews: Ivy "After Hours"

Back to the 90's.
3 Out Of 5 Stars

If you long for the days of Everything But The Girl's techno moments, or St Etienne's late night whispery cool, you'll probably get a big kick out of Ivy's "All Hours." Husband and wife team Andy Chase and Dominique Durand, along with Fountains of Wayne dude Adam Schlesinger mix the sound of 80's old school synths with the 90's trip-hop with Durand's sweet if somewhat undistinguished voice. As usual, Schlesinger brings his knack for memorable melodies (even though the writing credits are listed as the entire band), and all the songs pop along as expected.

However, Ivy has shown a greater knack for memorable songs that were more up-front that dreamy background. "All Hours" could have easily been titles "After Hours" for all its lack of energy. The muted chill of "All Hours" might have been a treasure; to me it sounds like something that dropped out of a 1997 lockbox.

   

My Amazon Reviews: Todd Rundgren "No World Order"

Rapping and Ranting with Rundgren
3 Out of 5 Stars

In the early 90's, the ever inventive Todd Rundgren took a stab at a new technology, the Interactive Musical CD. Rechristening himself TR-I, the unique "No World Order" appeared. While the original CD-I's were playable in a now obsolete format/technology, the CD's themselves are still available - and cheap, too - for play on a standard CD player.

This is one of Todd's oddest recordings. Comprised of 10 songs that are fractured into snippets across "No World Order's" duration, the album is all Todd playing all the music. He cross-cuts bridges, lyrics and choruses from each song (plus a quick drop-in from "The Twilight Zone" and a sample pulled over from his own "A Capella"), bouncing from one theme to another. Instead of the lyrical exercise of writing lyrics, cutting them apart and reassembling them at random, Todd did the same to his musical fragments. It makes for a very interesting cycle.

There are some superb individual songs here, with Todd singing (or more often, rapping) over the synthesized beats. This also perhaps Todd's angriest album, with the scathing "Fascist Christ" mincing no words when it comes to religious fundamentalists and "World Wide Epiphany" encouraging his listeners to "send a message to the government, pack it in cement." But it wouldn't be a complete Todd album without that one soul searching ballad, and on "NWO," it's "Time Stood Still."

That is the odd song out here, with rapid-fire rants like "Day Job" setting the primary tone of the CD. Todd kept the TR-I moniker for two more releases, "The Individualist" and a remixed soft-sounding version of this album called "No World Order Lite." This original "No World Order" remains as a testament to Todd's ongoing fascination with new technologies and his constant ability to leap from style to style at will.

My Amazon Reviews: Kraftwerk "Tran Europe Express"

Elegance and Decadence
5 Out 5 Stars

Having already created the aural electronic equivalent of driving on one of Europe's most famous roadways, Kraftwerk set about making the soundtrack to riding Europe's best known railroad line. "Trans Europe Express" is the electronic album that launched thousands more; everyone from David Bowie to Afrika Bambaataa to Radiohead has cited this album as an influence. In its 2009 remastered incarnation, "Trans Europe Express" gains in clarity and depth, and reinforces the fact that this 1977 album was decades ahead of its time.

TEE was the album where Kraftwerk began to manipulate not only their sound, but their look. The cover photo was a stylized studio shot and the innersleeve reveiled the very first images of the band as mannequins, an image that would become even more extreme in years to follow. The non-synthesized instruments from "Autobahn" were removed entirely and the interlocking title track/"Metal On Metal"/"Abzug" playout as a trip along the tracks with the monotonous clickety clack of the drum machines simulating the rolling cars. The deadpan voices chant the title and name drop meeting Iggy and Bowie in Berlin (an episode that really happened). It was the sound of the future, and sounds incredible even now.

My Amazon Reviews: Radiohead "Amnesiac"

I'm a reasonable man, get off my case.,

3 Out of 5 Stars 

In a rare moment of album to album consistency, Radiohead loosed "Amnesiac" a mere year after the head-turning electronica of "Kid A." And like that previous album, Thom Yorke just sucked upon that lemon until his sour view of the world oozed up from the meditative piano and synthesized songs laid forth. This time, though, things seem more traditionally based in song structures. Both "Knives Out" and the opening "Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box" almost feel like the Abacab structures. I did say almost.

And again, like "Kid A," "Amnesia" struggles to maintain the level of quality before ultimately puttering out. "Hunting Bears" is the biggest offender here, although it seemed to be included just to give guitarist Johnny Greenwood a chance to finally play. All is forgiven by the delirious brass band that closes out "Life In A Glass House." The horns that careened drunkenly on "Kid A's" "National Anthem" have sobered up enough to deliver an emotional wallop as Radiohead's dual-album experiment draws to a conclusion. In another two years, Yorke would return the guitars to the front of the band with "Hail To The Thief," and return Radiohead to rock and roll.

My Amazon Reviews: Radiohead "Kid A"

Yesterday I Woke Up Sucking a Lemon

3 Out Of 5 Stars

"OK Computer" was the sound or technology and humanity colliding in Radiohead's world with astonishing results. Three years later, and humanity got the short end of the stick. "Kid A" threw away any previous alignment with traditional rock music and plunged head first into the world of Aphex Twin and Brian Eno. Since Thom Yorke has a generally dour view of the world as it is, the skittering beats and washes of sound tend to submerge instead of uplift. On the Scale of Ambition, "Kid A" rates a 10. On the scale of listenability? Not so much.

"Kid A" and the follow-up, "Amnesiac," are difficult and alienating listens. The song that starts out sounding close to a potential dance record, "national Anthem," ultimately breaks down into a blindfolded New Orleans marching brass band colliding with each other on the thoroughfare. Yorke sings atop this with his voice sounding like it's being forced through a metallic filter. It's one of the oddest songs to ever reach the top of the album charts (where "Kid A" debuted in 2000). There is at least one traditional rock (verse verse chorus with guitars) song here, "Optimistic."

But really, Radiohead made "Kid A" as a bold statement of purpose, that after getting critical raves and big sales, they were not out to just "take the money and run," as Yorke bleats on "Idioteque." I will certainly give them that much credit. However, I can't say that, ten years later, "Kid A" has held its appeal like "OK Computer" or "The Bends" has.