Let the Music in Tonight

Give Life Back to Music by Daft Punk is the lavish opener on their final album, Random Access Memories from 2103. (That's a typo, but I'm leaving it in since these guys have been from the future since 1993.) The first seventeen seconds of this track is a glitzy 200mph million-ton avalanche of sound. Opening a song this way is like Mission: Impossible movies opening during the climax of some other story. A story that we're not privy to, probably because the protagonists are more impressive than we are and always up to something.

There are like a hundred different individual tones, undertones, and overtones to pick out during the opening section. I'm sad once it's over. But that's cool; they'll do it again in a minute or two.

I'm not really sad though, because of what happens next. The avalanche disintegrates as quickly as it appeared. What's left is actual Nile Rogers playing the hell out of a chkchkchk guitar riff like disco backlash never happened. Paul Jackson Jr. is laying down a chonky bass groove that's I can feel in my chest. The drums sounds as if I'm sitting right in the kit with the snare between my knees. Oh, and wind chimes or something is sparkling in back like fairy dust.

I'm not actually convinced that Give Life Back to Music is a good Daft Punk song. That's up for debate. At this point, there is no "punk" left. When it came time to record Random Access Memories, Daft Punk was operating as established pop-culture royalty making a victory lap. They had just scored a movie for Walt Disney Pictures (Tron: Legacy). An album that kicks ass in its own way but is not exactly sticking it to the man.

There's no hunger this this art; it's all craft. The subversiveness and youthful naivety of their earlier stuff that set the EDM world on fire in 1997 is no more. Random Access Memories is a murderers row of seasoned talent in front of and behind the microphone all working together to spin sonic gold. And, boy, do they ever.

What is not up for debate is that Give Life Back to Music sounds, as the French say, "incroyable." (Daft Punk is French). The song is intricate and spare, effortless and overwrought. It's the past, brought to you by the future. Above all, it's a heck of a start to what is likely the most well-produced album of the 2010s.

Data

Song: Give Life Back to Music
Album: Random Access Memories
Artist: Daft Punk
Genre: Electronic, Funk / Soul, Pop
Year: 2013
Length: 4:35
Composer: Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, Nile Rodgers,
Paul Jackson Jr., Thomas Bangalter
Producer: Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, Thomas Bangalter