The live set doesn't simply run through the hits, mindlessly segueing from one smash to another. One of the most remarkable aspects of Alive 2007 is how well it recontextualizes career nadir Human After All, turning previously leaden songs into ebullient rock'n'roll manifestos injected with Homework's air-tight Moroder-style anthems or Discovery's flamboyant funk, Human After All tracks are constantly improved and born anew. With a bounty of latent good will on their side thanks to the incredible re-playability of their first two albums, Daft Punk finally gave fans a million flashing reasons to fall in love with them all over again. 1 hip-hop songs, filling magazine spreads, spawning worthy would-be successors and, of course, owning the internet (on Flickr, Daft Punk photos currently outnumber Justin Timberlake snaps 2:1). And now, they're everywhere (except Gap ads, thankfully)- getting sampled on no.
But then, amped-up with enough electricity to illuminate a black hole, French house's masked men upstaged Madonna, previous electronic pioneers Depeche Mode, and (ironically) Kanye West at 2006's Coachella. After the shattering pop breakthrough of 2001's Discovery, Daft Punk were going through an especially angsty adolescence- their spit-shined heads way up their own asses. And early screenings of their art-house opus, Electroma, evoked (unfortunately accurate) comparisons to Vincent Gallo's on-the-road/oral sex epic Brown Bunny (except with endless scenes of hunk-o-metal ennui filling in for the graphic oral sex). The monster riffage and mind-numbing gloom of 2005's Human After All had our favorite party-starters turning downright nihilistic. Lest we forget, before the out-of-nowhere debut of the now-iconic 3D triangle in April 2006, it seemed like Daft Punk lost the plot.
Playing like a flawlessly sequenced and paced greatest hits album, this full-set Paris recording from June finds Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo connecting the booms among their three albums while officially cementing one of the year's most rewarding and welcomed comebacks. But still, even the most hectic web clip can't equal the French duo's visceral sound-and-vision assault, so the focus of Alive 2007 falls on the reason why Daft Punk were allowed to lug 11 tons of equipment around the world for the last 19 months in the first place: their music. Commenting on the decision, Daft Punk's Thomas Bangalter recently told Pitchfork, "The thousands of clips on the internet are better to us than any DVD that could have been released." And, in many ways, the Alive tour is a perfect match for YouTube- the ancient Egypt by-way-of "The Jetsons" spectacle barrelling its way through shitty compression quality with blinding force.
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