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Portraying the state of pop as a series of predictable formulae long since exhausted by corporate superstructure, Human After All more than lives up to its name, rendering a metaphor for failure on the grandest yet simultaneously most personal of terms.
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80Some of it is tough and unforgiving... and some is pure pop plastique. [Apr 2005, p.89]
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80It has everything you've come to expect from a Daft Punk album--innovation, cracking tunes, a palpable sense of its own absurdity--but this time the whole shebang's cranked up to 11. [Apr 2005, p.99]
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Not as overtly catchy (or cheesy) as Discovery, Human After All nonetheless is a hilariously cold and mechanical work that makes Kraftwerk sound like Curtis Mayfield. [May 2005, p.138]
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70The end result on Human is structurally and technically impressive, though at times aesthetically more curious than intriguing.
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There's a squelchy warmth at the heart of 'Human After All' that's been well masked since their arrival. [19 Mar 2005, p.59]
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70The album's most human aspect is its contradictory nature, an ultimate lack of emotion that make the exhilarating Homework and the sentimental Discovery so accessible. [#67, p.90]
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Human After All ends up being just not-bad (a first for Daft Punk); that may be hard to accept for fans that demand nothing less than brilliance from them, but just because it isn't an instant classic doesn't mean that it's totally unworthy, either.
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It's not a massive progression from their debut, and it appears that as the rest of the world has finally caught up with them, the duo from space appear to be having problems going forward.
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Thematically, it's stale and preachy, but few capture mechanized emotion like Daft Punk. [Apr/May 2005, p.142]
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It's official: The robots have won.
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On the whole, Human sounds guided by instructions as much as inspiration.
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50With "Human After All" the pair are running both on the spot and out of ideas. In making an album comprised of nothing but their stylistic tics – the over-used Vocoder/pitch bender, the monstrously compressed acid squelches, the crunchy, rock guitar motifs – Daft Punk are like a celebrity chef who serves up nothing but his signature dish. Soon, you'll stop eating in his restaurant.
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50Inexplicably, predictably, Daft Punk have become the first band to produce a retro post-parody of their own work.
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50Feels desultory and numb, verging on autistic. [Apr 2005, p.116]
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Daft Punk may have become the victim of their own animatronic satire.
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Dominated by overly repetitive, lumbering throwaways. [18 Mar 2005, p.68]
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49Where the weight of expectation and precedence get to have a say, this feels like not just a failure, but a heartbreaker.
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Whether or not Human After All - which of course, has not a single purely human voice in its midst - is supposed to be some great stroke of pop irony or self-reflexive wink is irrelevant. Boring, empty music that thinks it's making a point is condescending and pedantic.
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42Where 2001's Discovery coyly gene-spliced cock rock and New York garage, Human merely cuts and pastes. [Apr 2005, p.105]
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40Too much of it is straightforward four-to-the-floor anodynity, and a number of tracks run out of ideas almost immediately, explore touchstones they've caressed more inspiringly before or, worse, do both.
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40It's hard to explain the mindless metal riffing that weighs down this completely disappointing album. [May 2005, p.84]
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40The robots were more fun. [Apr 2005, p.118]
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Daft Punk have released an album so bland and repetitive that it may actually call into question all their past glory. It doesn't seem fathomable, but alas, the proof is seemingly inscribed in each note.
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The snarky, ironic title only seems to poke fun at what is Daft Punk's most programmed and artificial album to date, and this is just a part of what feels like an all in-joke record. [#9]
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30Apparently knocked off in just six weeks, Daft Punk's third album sounds like it took six days. Six short days. With long lunches.
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30It doesn't always make for an enjoyable listening experience, on or off the dancefloor.
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Human After All is determinedly monochromatic aurally, compositionally, and mood-wise. Gosh, they really are robots--the music is flat, barely inflected, sitting there like a vending machine waiting patiently for your quarters.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 50 out of 71
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Mixed: 10 out of 71
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Negative: 11 out of 71
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Stafford10
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JonL5