M83 – Hurry Up We're Dreaming (Naive)
5/5
Orchestral house techno dance pop folktronica (someone elses) shoegaze... Oh fuck it. Who wants to sound like Pitchfork anyway?
And so the next chapter of M83 is here. With his 6th studio album Anthony Gonzalez attempts to create a double CD masterpiece, to be filed alongside the The White Album or Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.
Somehow it feels like a peak, a zenith, but at the same time a perfect summary of everything he/they already has/have out there (big, small, contained and panoramic). The voices never get in the way of the music or vice versa. The latest addition of guitar and the ever present strings add another dimension to this head-in-the-clouds adventure that seems to place itself firmly in the outskirts of reality. That’s not to say it’s a difficult listen. From the very first the listening experience, it’s utterly immersive. It’s also pretentious and overblown. But trying to find a negative amidst the hubbub would be like looking for faults in someone you love – sooner or later you just learn to accept it for what it is.
Let it overwhelm you. Study the details. Listen solely to the apoplectic drums. Do whatever you want, but you'll get the same results. This LP has it all. It tells a story (and suitably ends on a perfect cadence). Some of the guitar could be Jonny Marr. A hint of optimism, surrounded by a cloak of melancholy. Or like a bad memory, that never quite goes away.
It's joyous, insular, it's light and it's dark. Like all the greatest art there's something indefinably curious about his outer personality, something that Gonzalez has tried to bring to the fore here. Inspired by recent tour companions Depeche Mode and The Killers, he decided it was about time he try and become a front man in his own right. Gonzalez's vocals have the anguished undergraduate charm of Animal Collective, but with a certain confidence or better yet, an acceptance. Having just turned 30 he has decided to bellow or sing, with the philosophy 'it's now or never.' This results in is his most personal album yet. An emotional journey perfectly encapsulated by a proud tear that fell upon his first listen to the finished article.
There's a real hint of maturity (seemingly a natural development from The Breakfast Club adolescence inspired video imagery) to the tried and tested formula of big synths, random samples and bursting, firework cracker drums, only this time magnificently stretched out across two sibling discs – each alone, a brilliant creation.
It’s as if his artistic side is forever catching up with his real life, forever delayed ten or twenty years in the past. But it’s this separation that cleverly allows the listener to also take a step back and contemplate everything from a distance. Gonzalez helps us look to an optimistic or at least a settled future from an indefinite time in the past when you were never quite yourself.
Listening in the kitchen, my disparate housemates have all (wittingly or not) succumbed in the end despite their immensely varied musical tastes. If something's worth doing it's worth doing again and again. M83 have demonstrated that there was something hidden inside their cinematic soundscapes all along... A human emotion.
Midnight City by M83
Artists in this article: M83
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