The Colby Echo

Issue date: 4/30/08 Section: Arts & Entertainment

Media Credit: amazon.com Gonzalez attempts bringing back the'80s in new album titled Saturdays=Youth.

Like Jay-Z said and as Common echoed in concert: "Niggas want to bring the '80s back, that's okay with me that's where they made me at." How long has this '80s revival been going on, anyway? You would think we'd be tired of ironically un-ironically celebrating that decade of bad hair and big synths, Reaganomics and Phil Collins by now, but hey, if it's okay with Jay-Z and Common, maybe I can let it slide--they made me in the '80s too, kinda.

Add Anthony Gonzalez to the list of '80s fans-no, scratch that, put him at the top of it-this dude really loves the '80s. Gonzalez's new album as one-man band M83, the awkwardly titled Saturdays=Youth, isn't just '80s fandom, it's '80s worship. Gonzalez has said explicitly that he was trying to capture his '80s youth in music, trying to remake "where they made me at." He got the big picture right: You've got your massive synths, robotic drums and pure unadulterated melodrama (there's a spoken interlude on single "Graveyard Girl" where a girl whispers, "I'm 15 years old and I feel it's already too late to live-don't you?"). And heads up John Hughes fans-there's even a Molly Ringwald look-alike on the album cover, auburn hair so perfectly matching the auburn leaves all around her.

Amazingly enough, the '80s emulation doesn't become a crutch for Gonzalez's own sensibilities. Instead, the self-imposition of a borrowed musical palette forces Gonzalez to restrain himself where he didn't before, which makes his electronic dream-pop more coherent and more succinctly enjoyable. No more sitting through 6 minutes of nothing for an M83 song to get to "the good part": tunes like the aforementioned Cure-esque "Graveyard Girl" dive into their lusciously digital hooks and harmonies with pure pop abandon. This is an M83 album you can put on at a party, not just a midnight drive alone along the French seaside.

The problem with the condensation of its sound is that M83 lose the anthemic drama its music previously had. Like listening to Sigur Ros, you always used to have to wait for the "good part" in an M83 song, but when you got there it always amazing. On Saturdays=Youth, I was always waiting for a crescendo that never came-many songs seem to go in circles, trapped in a nostalgic memory of days gone by. Even when the second half of the album dips toward more abstract song-structures like 11-minute closer "Midnight Souls Still Remain," it doesn't feel like it works as well simply because of the nature of the rest of the album. These are still great songs - the epically layered synths, ruthless optimism and sense of the sublime are still here, just not as powerfully as before.

But if Anthony Gonzalez wants to bring the '80s back, that's okay with me-that's where they made him at, and you can't deny someone his right to his own past. Despite my personal disbelief that the '80s revival could go on any longer or continue to be anything but fruitless, Saturdays=Youth, in its nostalgia and skillful mining of '80s musical tropes, is the perfect album for these increasingly sunny days, when we finally start feeling less like zombies and more like the young people we are. For fans, it won't be as memorable as previous M83 outings, but that's not really what it wants. As Gonzalez whispers on "Kim and Jessie": "Kids outside worlds / they are crazy about romance and illusion." Sounds like summer to me.

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