Doing Your Homework January 26, 2008
Posted by Andrew in daft punk, music, queens of the stone age, review.add a comment
I consider myself a pretty big Daft Punk fan. Not a huge Daft Punk fan, but I have all their albums and I really like them. I finished my collection this Christmas when I got Homework, their debut (and most critically-acclaimed) album. I had high hopes, and for the most part, this album lived up to them, but there’s parts that really rub me the wrong way. I’m going to give a song-by-song review of Homework in this blog, so here’s the tracklist:
- “Daftendirekt” – 2:44
- “WDPK 83.7 FM” - 0:28
- “Revolution 909″ – 5:26
- “Da Funk” – 5:28
- “Phœnix” – 4:55
- “Fresh” – 4:03
- “Around The World” – 7:07
- “Rollin’ & Scratchin’” – 7:26
- “Teachers” – 2:52
- “High Fidelity” – 6:00
- “Rock’n Roll” – 7:32
- “Oh Yeah” – 2:00
- “Burnin’” – 6:53
- “Indo Silver Club” – 4:32
- “Alive” – 5:15
- “Funk Ad” – 0:50
The album starts off with “Daftendirekt,” a play on words from the phrase “Live And Direct,” and it fits. Daftendirekt was recorded live, and it was the intro song to a Daft Punk concert, and very suiting as being the intro song here. I have no idea what he’s saying there, but it’s a good loop. Very good intro to the record.
“WDPK 83.7 FM” is nothing more than a looped sample, but it segueways Daftendirekt very nicely into “Revolution 909.” On its own, I probably wouldn’t like this. But I’m a person that always listens to albums all the way through, so this is a really good transition. I have to give Daft Punk props for giving their songs really great names. They try and put their name in normal things. All radio station call numbers have to start with W. So they just took 3 recognizable letters from “Daft Punk” and put them after a W to make their own radio station. Genius.
The next song is “Revolution 909″ and I really like this song, mostly because of the concept. The song “Revolution 9″ by The Beatles was a huge collage of sound with subliminal messages in it, and the phrase “Paul is dead” being repeated during a recording of people talking. In this song, there’s a lot of noise that comes before the music of this song, and someone yells “suicide” tying in this song to Revolution 9. I like Daft Punk’s references to things. The music of this song is kind of repetitive, but it’s not overly repetitive and has a good sound to it.
“Da Funk,” the next song, uses the title as an excuse to put their name in the titles of songs again. They could’ve said “The Funk,” but isntead they said “Da Funk,” which is what you get if you take the T and the P out of “Daft Punk.” Subtle, but cool. The music in this song is some of the best on the album.
“Phoenix” is kind of a lull. The music is good, and it’s a good song to be playing in the background while you’re working or something, but not a song that I would just put on and jam to.
The next track, “Fresh,” is a lot like Phoenix, but Fresh is very soothing. There’s a sample of the tide coming in and out during the whole thing and the song is very ambient sounding. This is something I would listen to when I want to be relaxed. Not a good standalone song, but good in the context of the album after the rush of Da Funk and Phoenix.
“Around The World” is probably the best song on the album. It’s definitely the most “songful” song on the album. This is one of the sonly songs that I heard BEFORE I got Homework, and I’ve loved it ever since. Really really good song. Very trance-like, just like Fresh before it. The thing that Homework really excels at is making a good flow throughout the album. All the songs seem to be in the “right” order. It’s very fluid.
“Rollin’ & Scratchin’” is one of the two worst songs on the album. I can listen to Homework all the way through, but when I get to Rollin’ & Scratchin’, I almost turn it off. The song is very annoying and displeasing to the ear. It’s creative on how it only uses one note for very long periods of time with no variations, and proves that you CAN make a one note song. But Queens Of The Stone Age already made an amazing one-chord song “You’ve Got A Killer Scene There, Man…” and it really kicks the crud out of this song. I really do not like this song. The end.
“Teachers,” has a very Discovery-esque vocal loop going on in the background, and that’s what makes the song worthwhile for me. The song is Daft Punk paying homage to their inspiration and it consists of naming off DJ’s that got them into the house music scene. Like I said, the background vocals make this song good. When those aren’t going on, it’s a little annoying.
The next song on the record is “High Fidelity.” This is one of the highlights of the album for me because it uses the non-lyrical vocal loop style that was expanded on in Daft Punk’s next album, Discovery. This is a very creative and catchy song.
Next: “Rock & Roll.” This song matches the annoyingness of Rollin’ & Scratchin’. The entire song almost is this strange vinyl scratch noise that sounds like two balloons being rubbed together over and over. This song hurts my ears.
“Oh Yeah” is a song that lives up to it’s name. Almost all the lyrics are “oh yeah.” This is kind of a throwaway song. I don’t think it add anything to the CD, and it’s not a good standalone song either. This is kind of an “in between” song, where you can’t tell if it’s a good song or a bad song. It’s leaning more towards the bad song side, though.
“Burnin’” is an awesome party song. The bassline in this song is really great, it makes the song good for me. Enough said.
“Indo Silver Club” is very dancy, but not really fast enough to be danced to. This song is alright. This is kind of like a dancier, not as catchy version of Burnin’.
“Alive” is the album’s real closer. It’s mostly a collage of percussion and synth. In my opinion, Daft Punk aren’t good at closing albums. They always have really good beginnings, but they always lose steam at the end. This song just proves that point even further. Discovery had a bad ending, and the next album, Human After All, had an awful ending. This one is worse than Discovery’s ending, but not as bad as Human After All.
The technical album closer is “Funk Ad,” or as some like to call it, “knuF aD.” This “song” is just about a minute of Da Funk, played backwards, and it actually doesn’t sound bad. A fun ending, even if it wasn’t really an ending, just more of a last word.
After listening to Homework a lot, I think that it’s almost as good as Daft Punk’s second album, Discovery. It’s pretty close, but Homework has too much filler, where as Discovery is good (almost) all the way through. This is really what Daft Punk is all about though. Discovery is their “weird” album, really.
Score:
3 out of 4 or 7.2 out of 10
