After seventeen years of relative silence, Kraftwerk unexpectedly returned in 2003 with the release of Tour De France Soundtracks. It sounds a lot like what you'd expect a band seventeen years rusty to sound like; good, but not on the level of their previous works. Personally, I feel one of the biggest problems is that these robotic vocals are easily the weakest out of all they've used, and having that dominate a decent amount of certain tracks doesn't really help. And aside from the admittedly excellent "Vitamin" and the closer/title-track, the songwriting here is merely decent, not really indicative of the genius Kraftwerk used to operate with. That said, it's still a good-sounding and easy to listen to record with the staples of their synthpop/progressive electronic style used competently enough, so it's definitely worth hearing if you're a fan of the group.
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