“My Love” is a fantastic song. Emotional, dynamic and dense, it’s full of peaked out synth blooms and outlandish percussion rolls — to say nothing of the crisp falsetto JT uses to serenade his chosen ladyfriend. But that’s not news to you.

The DFA don’t really care about all that, or so it seems. Plucking Timberlake from his Timbaland-crafted thrown, James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy provide the contrary setting: a cavernous instrumental strikingly familiar to anyone who has heard their extended remixes. Splashes of ride cymbal, digital hand claps and tambourine replace the towering guhdunkadunk toms. An undercurrent of thoughtless funk bass and twinkling Rhodes piano slowly bubbles around Justin, leaving him sounding positively tiny, almost lonely instead of jubilant. The tune’s pacing is also rather front-loaded, with the DFA opting to play through the original length of the song, fucking around for a couple minutes then briefly reprising the last bits of Justin’s vocals. With T.I. completely absent from the tune and a lack of compelling new elements during the DFA facetime (except increasingly insistent synth chatter), the last four minutes of the song are one giant watch-check.

Burnt out, perhaps? Busy collaborating with corporate sponsors (not hating, just saying)? Simply not caring? They had a chance to recast one of the year’s best singles as one of the year’s best dance singles — that is, unless they didn’t much care for the tune to begin with. Either way, the DFA’s languid, routine indie funk remix neuters another otherwise excellent song and bores the dancefloor.

Audio: Justin Timberlake, “My Love” (DFA remix)

And if you’ve got better things to do than sit through all 8 minutes of the above, check out Ean Golden’s tightfisted edit. (Edit and original first appeared on the always amazing Discobelle.net.)

Audio: Justin Timberlake, “My Love” (DFA remix, Ean Golden edit)