Review: M83, Hurry Up, We're Dreaming

I was first introduced to M83 in 2004, through the sublime Donnie-Darko-meets-Just-Like-Heaven video for “Don't Save Us From the Flames,” the lead single from M83's 2005 disc Before the Dawn Heals Us. M83, the electronic project of French born, L.A.-based Anthony Gonzales, releases a new double-album, Hurry Up, We're Dreaming, on October 18, from Mute. Here are my thoughts on the album.

First off, there are no songs on these discs that I enjoy quite as much as “Don't Save Us From the Flames,” or “Colours” from his 2008 album Saturdays = Youth. Overall, however, the album given its length, is surprisingly consistent in quality. Dawn had three or four songs that I loved, and many that I found unlistenable. Saturdays was more enjoyable overall than Dawn, but there were still some songs, notably those that seemed reminiscent of Cocteau Twins, that I skipped over. (I have a supremely low tolerance for the Cocteau Twins; the mere fact that Massive Attack managed to make Liz Fraser's voice palatable is one of the reasons I still consider Mezzanine to be the greatest musical achievement of the 21^st century.)

Gonzales has said that his inspiration for the album was the Smashing Pumpkins' 1995 double-disc Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. I have to say that I can hear that influence in the scope and ambition of the album, but not necessarily in the music. A large part of it has to do with Gonzales's voice; Billy Corgan has a very distinctive vocal delivery, and to my ears Gonzales sounds more like early solo Peter Gabriel, and at moments like a Berlin-trilogy era Bowie than the Pumpkins singer. At moments I can hear strains of some of the Pumpkins's tunes, but oddly enough not those from Mellon Collie—bits and pieces of “Disarm,” “Annie-Dog,” the cover of “Landslide,” and overall I'd say the album has the same overwhelming warped feeling as “Real Love,” as if analog equipment were overheating somewhere. [Incidentally, I took some of my children to see the final installment of Harry Potter at a drive-in theater this summer. At one point, the soundtrack became very warped sounding, as if Brian Eno had suddenly wrested control of the score. Then the projector overheated, the film restarted, and it was back to the average, boring Harry Potter soundtrack.] Maybe part of the reason I can't hear Mellon Collie is that to me, the standout track on that album was “1979” which had a blissed-out repetitive vibe much different than the rest of the Pumpkins's excess. Here everything feels over-the-top. There are only two tracks that seem to differ from the M83 formula in the slightest way. The first is “Year One, One UFO” which sounds a bit like someone mistakenly popped on a Clannad disc until it gives way to M83's frantic guitars in its closing moments. The second, which you can sample below, is “New Map” which gives way in the end to a sort of Sufjan Stevens style jam. Gonzales said that the inspiration for Saturdays = Youth was the films of John Hughes. Stevens wrote about Illinois, and the Smashing Pumpkins's rose out of Chicago. Maybe that city is the real inspiration.