John Maclean has long been DFA's secret weapon. The Rapture gives good face. James Murphy gives good copy. Delia and Gavin give good "oh, they're easily my favorite" hipster trump card. But Maclean is the most effective. If any DFA records come close to hands-aloft status, it's his "Give Me Every Little Thing" and "You Can't Have It Both Ways". They're, you know, house music. No need for any prefixes or suffixes.
Maclean's former band, Six Finger Satellite, were a bruising mixture of skinny tie and thick neck, mixed eye-meltingly loud by Murphy live, and all but blueprinting Les Savy Fav (who I like better, but why lie?) on record. Which might explain why his dance music is so muscular (have you listened to those early Rapture EP's lately?), but it does make Less Than Human, a good chunk of which could be described as "gentle" or at least "pretty", a bit surprising. It's not quite the masterpiece everyone (at least me) was hoping for (the exclusion of "You Can't Have It Both Ways", for example, should be punishable Midnight Express-style) but it does deliver on the hype, which in 2005 is almost the same thing.
"Shining Skinned Friend" is filled to bursting over its bacon fat drums: theremin noise, vocodered sprites, ghostly coos, vocal synths, italo ripples, "dark" Euro vocals. This is his happening and it freaks me out. "Give Me Every Little Thing" is pure bliss, from the interstellar electrical storm opening to the whammy bar keytar solo that closes it out. In between, you've got a giant's handclaps, a groaning slap bass, barbiturate P-Funk chanting, and call-and-response synth squiggles. "Tito's Way" is one of the few nu-disco tracks that recognizes the power of the Party Whistle. (No "whoop whoop" though.) It also has breaking bells, steady-rocking drums, farty robot bass, and sassy-yet-dead-eyed femme vocals.
The rest of the record is surprisingly melancholy. "Love Is in the Air" is Metro Area after a crying jag. "In The Afternoon" is background music for a breakup scene in a WB teen drama starring Ralf und Florian. "My Time Is Running Out" opens with Arcadian, cascading synth-strings and trills of bleeps like all-white Christmas lights blinking on and off. It could be the intro to a Kylie Minogue record before it rolls out another gently bumping, mid-tempo groove. (Actually, re-reading that, I'm not sure if it isn't a Kylie Minogue record.) Closer "Dance With Me" lopes for 12 minutes towards a climax that never comes, a busted robot shooting little sparks of piano as it limps towards Nancy Whang's siren song.
The title track of Less Than Human (which appears nowhere on the album) was first released on the 2004 DFA Compilation #2. But come on: Even allowing for coincidence, is it possible to hear it without this year's Daft Punk album looming like an unanswered question? Alongside Vitalic-- Maclean's closest contemporary, especially when you factor in the penchant for queasy synth miniatures like opener "AD2003"-- Maclean the student is now doing the "robot rock" thing better than the masters. And he only rocks about half the time. But then again Daft Punk once made their rep singing about unrequited love, rather than just breaking hearts.
