M83's Saturdays=Youth

The brain behind M83, 26-year-old Frenchman Anthony Gonzalez, sings softly over sweeping synth and guitar, sounding crisp and hopeful, yet poignantly nostalgic. The cover art for Saturdays=Youth, just released this April 15, looks just how the music sounds – a golden, summer landscape replete with beautiful young people who look like they could star in a Sofia Coppola film. Technically, the harmonies remain tonally bright and airy, rarely budging from major keys throughout the album. The effect is that of summer daybreak, but the lyrics suggest that the album may be entirely set at dusk or late at night. Contrasts like this make this album dynamic enough to live on after the hype period and relevant in a variety of contexts.

Producer Ken Thomas, who has also worked with the Cocteau Twins and Sigur Ros worked with Gonzalez on this album. These influences are more than evident in the harmonically lush, progressive quality (indicative of Sigur Ros’s work), as well as the definite 1980’s sway reminiscent of ethereal dream-poppers, The Cocteau Twins. The overall effect is that of organized melody liquefied and smoothed over like a watercolor painting. For use as background music, this M83 album works gorgeously. For fans of My Bloody Valentine, this brand of shoegaze offers some of the thickness but none of the distortion. For fans of the M83 of Before the Dawn Heals Us, expect the layering, but imagine the building instrumentation gathering and then being completely blended together in an entrancing mist.

Scattered through the lyrics are themes of shadowed longing and obsessions with dying young, making the optimistic sonic qualities resoundingly haunting. Even in the highly energetic second track, “Kim and Jessie,” which depicts a young couple “crazy about romance and illusion,” there are repeated shadows and mysteries. In the second single (and perhaps most Sofia Coppola-esque track), “Graveyard Girl,” a fifteen-year-old, gothic girl who feels that it’s too late to live “spits on summers and smiles to the night. / She collects crowns made of black roses / but her heart is made of bubble gum.” Despite the gloomy content, the heart of the song is hopeful (literally made out of bubble gum, perhaps in the fashion of a darker Lolita), if not just for the sheer beauty of the shimmering synthesized melody.

Although songs like the first single, “Couleurs,” can take more than six minutes to become interesting, the album in its entirety is ideal for both solitary headphone nights and picnics with lemonade close at hand.

M83 - "Kim & Jessie" mp3
M83 - "Couleurs" mp3

This music video for "Graveyard Girl" is very well tailored to the musical and lyrical content: