M83

One Liner: Atmospheric electro and dance

Poster Position: 3

Thoughts: This was one of the lock down artist guesses I had for this year's festival, as this guy is playing anywhere and everywhere this summer.  I heard great things about their concert a few months ago at Stubb's, but I have to say that the new album left me less than impressed.  Despite that, I have a great memory of a Girl Talk show a few years ago, where he mixed in "Midnight City" as the fruition of a build up and drop, and it worked so freaking well I levitated.  You know "Midnight City," it is far and away the biggest hit from this dude.

Creepy ass video.  But the song has 187.5 million streams on Spotify and then 7 million views on YouTube, so it is up there in the streaming stratosphere.  The band is a French guy named Anthony Gonzalez (and used to also include another French guy named Nicolas Fromageau, who has the best French last name I've heard in the last ten minutes.  That name sounds like a beret-wearing stinky-cheese salesman if I've ever heard one.)

That song is from 2011's Hurry Up, We're Dreaming, which is pretty cool for being kind of dreamy atmospheric synth pop mixed with dance tracks.  It is a kind of schizo album, in that many tracks are super chill and relaxing ("Splendor," for example) and then others get you all hyped up to jam out ("Ok Pal," for example).  It is a double-disc, for some reason, and so he could have left a song or three off of it, but it has a cool sound.  The other hit from the album, and his second most listened-to track on Spotify, is "Wait," which was used to high comedy in some commercial I saw where two kids were about to kiss.  Ah yes, this one.

I like that commercial.  Like most, I'd never heard of the band until this 2011 album, but it looks like they've been making music for a while.  2008's Saturdays = Youth, 2007's Digital Shades Vol. 1, 2005's Before the Dawn Heals Us, 2003's Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts, and 2001's M83.  Wikipedia shows that Saturdays = Youth was a breakout album for them, but I'm not feeling it much either.  It isn't bad, just kind of sounds like Cure b-sides covered by a stinky cheese purveyor.

After those, 2014's You and the Night is an instrumental album that was apparently the soundtrack for a movie called Les Rencontres d'après minuit, which has the following plot, according to Wikipedia.  "Around midnight, a young couple and their transvestite maid prepare for an orgy. Their guests will be The Slut, The Teen, The Stud and The Star.  As each guest arrives they tell their story, most of them too fantastical to believe. Once the guests have shared their stories the hosts tell their story of immortality and a love that crosses death.  As the orgy begins fantasy and reality combine until the group is both watcher of and participant in their own liaisons."  Mmmmkay.  The soundtrack is fine, just atmospheric synth twiddling.

The new album, 2016's Junk, just does very little for me (as you can see from my review link above). Super 80's referential, with kind of a winking lean on outdated sounds in the midst of the synths and machine noises.  I just don't care for it.  I played "Do it, Try It" when I reviewed the album, so here is the other popular tune from this album, called "Go! (feat. Mai Lan)"

Pretty snappy little tune and all, I just still don't care about hearing it anymore.

So then where do I stand on seeing this one play live?  Hearing good things from people I trust about music makes me think that I should see the live show and experience the action in person.  Even if I know I won't listen to this music otherwise at home, maybe I'll just bite the bullet and go jam out in the crowd.  We'll see how the schedule shakes out.