o R.L. Stine

You and your friends are listening to Daft Punk’s Homework on repeat. “Revolution 909” and “Da Funk” have you tearing up the house, while “Around the World” keeps you in a perpetual state of head nodding. You wear out the skip button to get to these tracks, but once you get there it doesn’t matter. But watch out! Paragraph two brings news—will you survive it?

You wait four years. Daft Punk has become a non-entity in your life, a memory you look upon with nostalgia, but without expectation. Then Discovery hits the shelves. Daft Punk is back and it has transformed its sound from the hottest, rockingest house music around to an alien blend of funk, electronica, and pop that could only have been made by pop geniuses. Robot pop geniuses, that is. “Digital Love” and “One More Time” are two of the sweetest slices of digi-pop ever created, but what’s more, Discovery requires no skip button. Move on to paragraph three—if you’re brave enough.

Three years later, all you’ve gotten is a remix album with the audacity to make “One More Time” acoustic. You begin to give up hope. Then these two dudes called Ratatat show up at your house. “Yo, we’re totally going to change the face of music. You’ve heard Discovery, right? Well, Daft Punk’s given us the power to make that album sound lamer than Homework.” If you trust them, skip to paragraph five. If you choose to be loyal to Daft Punk, read paragraph four.

It’s been five years. In addition to gaining sixty pounds, your life has been made miserable by a series of ill-fated collaborations between Daft Punk and the DFA and two live albums (Still Aerodynamic and We’re Going to Celebrate One More Time, God Damn It!) that have left you nearly religion-less. But you maintain enough faith to buy Daft Punk’s third album, Party Like It’s 2009!!. Approximately one hour later, you are found dead on your apartment floor.

Ratatat releases its debut album on XL Recordings within the year. Opener “Seventeen Years” is as good as anything Daft Punk has ever produced, boasting a futuristic groove with the power of the hardest-hitting songs from Homework, the atmosphere of Discovery’s middle section, and a sense of subtlety and restraint Daft Punk never managed. Most of the songs follow in a similar vein, offering forty-five minutes of beautiful tension and release. Occasionally, the songs grow a little tiresome, especially around the album’s center, but the more diverse closing tracks, “Spanish Armada” and “Cherry”, pick up the slack. Altogether, Ratatat is a great album, taking the sound Daft Punk constructed on Discovery and transforming it into a remarkably intricate, painstaking work of instrumental genius. Your trust in Ratatat paid off well.