It sounds like how it feels to live inside a triumphal music box. Enter minor chords, rising/falling cloudburst, extended pauses, minute emotional accretion. Virtual hi-hat kicks one channel, a sputtering low-end jams the other. Odd as it may seem, "Sitting"- complete with dorky "let's go" sample- is reminiscent of the Faint doing an instrumental AM radio version of "Bizarre Love Triangle", and it's here I began missing the band's eventual focus on upfront live drums.Īlbum closer "I'm Happy, She Said" points clearest to M83's future, opening on organ and glockenspiel before sputtering into Northern Lights percussion. A few snippety pieces are merely ear-candy transition, but fleshier works- the swooning "Night" and upbeat "Slowly"- dote on dreamy glitch-pop. Contributing to their cinematic frame, Gonzalez and Fromageau use a fair share of movie dialogue, and other speakers take turns imparting ghostly (or robotic) lines between drum machines and Sirkian swells. 'I'm happy,' she said." Once this simple code's cracked, the music works as soundtrack to the buried tableau. In fact, when read in order and punctuated accordingly, M83's 14 track titles narrate the briefest boy-girl interaction: "Last Saturday night at the party, Kelly, sitting facing that violet tree, staring at me. Rich in static, gauzy meteor showers and analog synth, the earthier palette may appeal to those who thought Before the Dawn too gigantic. The disembodied guitars of his later period do evoke Kevin Shields M83's dream pop, though, is more redolent of mid-period MBV, especially Isn't Anything's "Soft As Snow (But Warm Inside)" minus the vocals, and here this sweaty-palm sensibility is clearest. Cynics term Gonzalez's shoegaze one-dimensional, but he's focused on stars and hearts, not his laces. If anything, M83 is a good spot to give pause to later Loveless comparisons.
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