October 18th, 2011 1:00am
Brighten My Trail
M83 specialize in a sort of musical nostalgia that does very little to move me, though I recognize the ways it aggressively jabs at the emotional buttons of those for whom the idea of "The Eighties" might have a profound resonance. Their new album, a double disc set, is sprawling and "epic," but its expanse is mostly numbing – a few setpiece numbers are surrounded by ethereal time-wasters and underwritten bombast. M83 aim for a cinematic grandeur and mostly attain it; it's just too bad that
Hurry Up, We're Dreaming would be a very mediocre film.
I also have issues with Anthony Gonzalez's voice – I appreciate that he's "going for it," and committing to expressing something akin to passion in his performances, but that doesn't keep him from sounding like some kind of petulant eunuch. Why is this the default for so much acclaimed indie music right now? It conveys powerful emotion, but no agency. I can see why that a lot of young people today would identify with that, but ugh, I don't think it's a positive thing!
This doesn't mean that M83 can't nail it here and there. The single
"Midnight City" is a very strong and engaging composition that compresses the charm and ambition of the band into four minutes so effectively that it makes the remaining 70 minutes of the album seem entirely redundant. I'm also fond of "Claudia Lewis," a vaguely funky track that balances its hyper-romantic atmosphere evenly with a few sharp hooks and a vocal performance that, while thin and bleating, gets across some convincing emotional stakes.
11 Responses.
10/18/11 1:24 am
I agree with your review BUT two negative reviews in a row? Not the usual tenor of this site.
10/18/11 6:47 am
I like both of these songs, though, particularly the Real Estate song. Sometimes you have to talk about the good along with the bad.
10/18/11 10:54 am
“petulant eunuch”!!!
Awesome.
10/18/11 11:35 am
I agree with you about the, “It conveys powerful emotion, but no agency” comment. I get really bored with indie music because I want people playing and singing their hearts out. I want to hear some genuine emotion and really feel it. Where are our young Bob Mould’s and Eddie Vedder’s?
10/18/11 12:00 pm
I was excited for this record. I like M83’s “setpiece numbers” quite a bit, and the last album had a decent ratio of good songs to empty bombast, and figured if he was going to go to the trouble of recording a double album there would at least be an album’s worth of good songs on it. But…no.
10/18/11 6:52 pm
Trentemoller’s remix of Midnight City blow M83 out of the water
10/18/11 7:55 pm
“The Eighties” don’t have a particularly huge resonance for me. I don’t particularly like the Breakfast Club, and I wasn’t a huge fan of the last album. BUT I love this album, so clearly something else is going on here other than nostalgia. In terms of music, I like the fact that he’s trying to marry My Bloody Valentine to synthesizers. But I guess the thing that really attracts me to this album is how unabashedly escapist it is, like he’s trying to make an almost-pathological drive to deny reality into something heroic (or at least sexy).
10/19/11 9:59 pm
[...] I love Matthew Perpetua precisely for posts like this one. In one fell swoop he singles out the best song on the new album by retro synthgazer guy M83 and [...]
11/11/11 2:04 pm
I’ve been a reader of this blog for a long, long time. Something like 5 years? Anyway, this post made me consider unsubscribing. This is the first time I recall you being so dismissive, and about a record that I think is going to be lauded by critics and listeners (and not just people who fit into the stereotypes you try to draw here as fans of this sound).
I’ve endured a few years of diminishing returns with Fluxblog. Too often you review music I heard about long ago, when you used to uncover truly hidden gems like Prototokyo’s “Underneath the Sheets (of Time)” (guess I’ve been a reader of more like 6 or 7 years). Too often I find myself wondering why on earth anyone would bother blogging about some of the tracks you post. But mostly I take issue with your old-man stance with this review. These kids with their over-emoting voices and nostalgia for the over-remembered 80s, I miss Pearl Jam / R.E.M. / insert canonized 90’s college rock band, rinse, repeat until wrinkly.
Differences of opinion aside, every other blog I read regularly seems to have grasped that the best thing about blogs is that gone are the Pitchfork-style attacks on culture the author just doesn’t resonate with. Don’t turn into Pitchfork, Matthew.
11/12/11 11:17 am
You know I’ve been writing for Pitchfork for like three years now, right?
I’m sorry if I’m not finding enough obscure things for you — seriously, there are at least a hundred other blogs run by people in their teens and early 20s who specialize in that sort of thing, and I simply do not have the time, patience or inclination to focus on that these days. The emphasis of this site shifted to focusing on criticism and personal connection with material a long while ago, and that’s just how it’s going to be from here on out.
Clearly I am not entirely dismissive of M83 if I like this song. But I am not going to hesitate to criticize what I think is not working in this music, even if a lot of people are into it.
11/14/11 2:11 pm
I guess it must be obvious now that the last time I took the time to read a Pitchfork review was well over 3 years ago. I don’t mean to appear ungrateful, I’ve discovered a ton of good music thanks to you and this blog, and I really liked that about it.
I stuck around as Fluxblog got less about discovery for me, but it’s just too disappointing to see something that was super positive turn into the dismissive use of quotation marks, something that was a change of pace become what I dislike about music journalism (which led me to seek out music blogs in the first place).
You’re right, there are plenty of other places out there that cover these bases, and that’s where I’ll go from now on. But, seriously, this was the first music blog I ever found, and I had a lot of fun reading it over the years, so thanks.