Caught in the Carousel

M83

Saturdays=Youth
Mute

On a lark I bought M83's Before the Dawn Heals Us one day in 2005. Can't say why. It seemed serendipitous; I had seen their name every time I turned around. I listened to that CD for two weeks straight, thrown sideways by the architecture of their sound. It was both dense and airy; lyrically it was street-wise and heaven-dreaming. This was a band to watch.

Now three years later, frontman Anthony Gonzalez has given us a concept album. The characters on the cover of the CD booklet seem to have dressed up for a remake of 1985's The Breakfast Club, and the music is full of references to that era. Songs like "Graveyard Girl" summon up the thumping sound of Echo and the Bunnymen and "We Own the Sky" could easily be part of any Orchestral Maneuvers In The Dark collection. One of 1985's landmark albums, Kate Bush's Hounds of Love is paid homage in the song "Up!": "The hounds of love/They bite our heels as we retreat." So how could this all go so wrong? I have no idea, but this album is almost unlistenable. The lyrics are uninspired and the musicianship is all airiness; nothing is ever grounded on this album. Yes, much of the music in the 1980's was a tad meringue, but the best of that era (Roxy Music's Avalon, David Bowie's Let's Dance, Bush's Hounds of Love, and the seminal masterpiece of that decade: Bryan Ferry's Boys and Girls) had about them a darker side. Each album was full of knowing asides and introspective wanderings that in lesser hands were just musings and poutings.

Saturdays=Youth has only one track that warrants repeated listens. "Too Late" has a spacey Alan Parson's Project feel; it could have been the follow up single to "Eye In The Sky." But even then, it's a simulacrum of what was the 1980's music scene. But in the end, M83's vision is more Howard the Duck than Blade Runner.

Three years ago it seemed to me that M83 was building for itself a massive structure wherein greatness will be housed; a museum, if you will. But I am afraid that if they continue along the lines of Saturdays=Youth that building will be little more than a Wal-Mart with shelves stocked with cheap knockoffs.

--Thomas Cooney