M83
Saturdays = Youth
(Mute)
In alternative music circles, an M83 release is a big event. The French duo's 2001 debut snuck up on most listeners and can still be hard to find. Their second, Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts, took their cinematic sounds to a much wider audience, as did their subsequent release Before the Dawn Heals Us. If the previous albums were the musings of a synth nut exploring dark menacing subjects and moody keyboards, their latest, Saturdays = Youth, is a sharp U-turn into teen love, angst, joy, despair and general hormonal confusion.
Some critics have likened it to the feeling you get from watching a John Hughes film, but that would be doing sole remaining member Anthony Gonzalez a disservice, though he is an avowed Molly Ringwald fan. Instead, the 26-year-old has created a more muscular, wider 80s-themed musical canvas this time around, as songs like Kim & Jessie blend dreamy Euro-pop choruses over reverb-heavy guitar that sounds like a long-lost cousin to 80s act the Dream Academy or a more devilish Thompson Twins.
The album's heart and soul belongs to female guest vocalist Morgan Kibby, whose wispy, heavenly sweet nothings provide a fine counterpart to Gonzalez on Skin of the Night, what the Cocteau Twins could have sounded like.
