M83?

^nice sax

any thoughts on the new album? i was hoping the 80s nostalgia thing was just a pleasant tangent, instead it seems our hero is going deeper and deeper into his childhood

A bit disappointing, to be honest - I've played it a bunch of times now but nothing's really sticking. And the first track just makes me wish Zola Jesus was singing on all of them. :/

Anyone seen him/them live recently? Thinking about catching a show on Halloween night.

Am really, really hoping this version is not what the thing will sound like in the end, so I will hold back with my final verdict until listened to it in some proper conditions, heavyweight white-marbled 4LP-Deluxe-Gatefold Premium-Package on a full moon at 4am might do.

Up to this point and with only 3-4 spins it seems to resemble Until the Dawn the most. Minus the the crasser passages like Asterisk, plus god-awful vocals at times, plus pathos cranked up to whole new levels (which is not that surprising). Some real bummers on it though.

9.1

Can't hack the new album at all. It just sounds like a lot of structural pop moves stitched together without any content in the way of good tunes. It's all "drop the synth line for a few seconds and then BRING IT BACK LOUDER" and "ok let's add a choral bit here", but few of the songs have any good reason to exist in the first place.

So yeah, I don't like it. Saturdays = Youth is still brilliant though.

This is a totally self-indulgent 80s comfort food album and I love it

reminds me of talk talk in places

so wrong

This is a totally self-indulgent 80s comfort food album and I love it

― do not wake the dragon (DJP), Wednesday, October 19, 2011 11:58 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

I love how shamelessly epic this album is. I also love how it recalls early Simple Minds. I don't necessarily love how much it sounds like Explosions in the Sky at times.

mixed feelings on this. initial listen did NOT pop for me - kinda felt like a watered down interpolation of m83's greatest hits or something. like, i'm noticing stray elements taken from previous m83 albums, but all reimagined in cheery major chords. at first, it felt way too cheesy. then i remembered thinking back to my initial reaction to S=Y, and how much of a grower that was. so i gave HUWD a few more listens, and it got better every time. it's a pretty deep album surprisingly - very bittersweet. like, "splendor" is a killer breakup song, and wtf is up with the end of "raconte-moi une histoire"... "it'd be great... right?"

some stray thoughts:

- it's interesting how his album-by-album progression into cheese is so positive linear.
- he mentioned in an interview the two discs are meant to be complimentary - each song has a brother/sister on the other disc, which i find mad cool. since i forgot to separately tag disc 1 and 2, my mp3 player plays each 1-1, 2-2, 3-3 song from alternating discs, and i can see the parallels between songs a bit.
- love the joshua tree guitars on "reunion"
- i wanna be a fuckin magic frog. i wouldn't like a world where everything is a damn cupcake tho
- the splendor/wait brother/sister pair are by far my fav tracks on the DD (double disc)
- i like zola jesus but the "ft. zola jesus" is a little ???

oh ya, i also like "echoes of mine" throwing it back to the muffled vocal samples of the first m83 album, then BLOWING IT ALL THE F UP

Reminds me of It Bites in places.

That Fork review not OTM about this being the easiest M83 to listen to in one sitting, and also about the instrumentals all being important. Also, the songs are generally not as strong as they were on the last album, and the tendency toward wordless Coldplay-esque "whoooo-oooa!" ing is downright annoying. But there are enough bits of loveliness and anthemic cheese spread throughout here that I still enjoy it. Just, again ... sort of shameless.

<3 "claudia lewis" & "midnight city"
dont give a fuck abt the rest, i think

i co-sign that post if you switch "steve mcqueen" out for "midnight city"

i totally get why people love this band/album, and i def like them, but idk as much as i want to go head over heels for them... i just can't idk

Listened to some stuff today, and it sounds great. Ended up adding them to this historical Spotify playlist that I am working on: http://open.spotify.com/user/geirhong/playlist/4G7v8uE45O2Hr94Je2Bgy7

I really do love this record, but like in two years this specific brand of Drive soundtrack shrillwave blown-out RETROZANIA is gonna be more embarassing than the Faint's Flock Of Seagulls haircut by 2005, so enjoy this while it lasts kiddies

It's embarrassing now. That's part of its charm.

I've had Desire's album for a couple of years now, and it's still great. xpost

Man, I just realized that half of this album sounds like that Justin Bieber track that was slowed down 800%.

that thing was awesome!

It's embarrassing now. That's part of its charm.

yeah, and the unironic nature of m83's 80s-fixation is a big part of the appeal.

by contrast, my fixation with the starlight vocal band is 48% ironic, and 52% ironic.

Just figured out that there's a bonus track called "Mirror" that comes with the album. You have to find the code on the case underneath the booklet and enter it here: http://www.m83mirror.com/. It's really hard to read and took me forever to make out the characters. Oh, and as for the song, I can see why it's not on the album...

This is a totally self-indulgent 80s comfort food album and I love it

That "Midnight Sun" outro sax solo is right outta the PSB's "Suburbia."

"Claudia Lewis" sounds exactly like New Order's "Thieves Like Us". Or is it just me?

But yeah, the shamelessness in the way he rips off all of his favourite 80's bands is a big part of the album's appeal.

"Claudia Lewis" reminds me a bit of the Ford and Lopatin album (which is obv. influenced by a ton of 80s stuff).

Man, there are some absolutely fantastic moments on here ("Steve McQueen", "Wait", "Intro", "Claudia Lewis", "Midnight Sun"), but enough clunkers to really keep it from being as exciting as it could be from start to finish. I know its cliche to trot this out for every double-album ever, but there is a seriously amazing single disc in here somewhere.

Yeah, it's definitely overstuffed.

haven't bothered to read this thread yet, but...

there was an ilx mbv thread in which nabisco waxed poetically about how "when you sleep" had this ecstatic-sounding refrain. which kinda carried the song

and i think that there are a couple of tracks on hurry up that do that thing. also using the same devices maybe-- sequencer-driven refrain interposed with somewhat understated verses (though for sure less guitar-driven). i know i've heard "midnight city" before when i was out, at least i think i have... but at home actually sitting down and listening to it, i think it captures that expansive euphoric feeling so well. hard to argue with.

think it's even a more potent distillate than some of those loveless tracks. crack/powder analogy IF YOU WILL

My problem with the album is the angsty yelpy vocals as apposed to the calmer whispery delivery on all the past albums that were great because they contrasted the epic-ness of the songs so well. Makes them sound less mature without at least one element of the music holding back a bit.

yeah, i think i get what you're saying, but i feel the opposite. like i love that there's not much subtlety. fits in with the vibe. like dude was just bursting at the seams and couldn't contain himself and so the songs are just OUT THERE HUGE

Yeah, I mean I like Midnight City and a few other songs I don't know by name, but that whole approach drives him closer to a 2000s era mall-emo synth band kind of aesthetic in my honest opinion!

Also, wordless anthemic Coldplay vox.

Been loving this star for quit a long while
It's still OK. The mine he's seaming.

Could do better though

Yeah, I mean I like Midnight City and a few other songs I don't know by name, but that whole approach drives him closer to a 2000s era mall-emo synth band kind of aesthetic in my honest opinion!

Yeah, I think I get that. Like in Midnight City the synth sound is almost generic "bangers by rote" setting or something

but i have listened to it a thousand times over the past few days, and each time it gets better. but maybe it just speaks to some part of me. or maybe i am just trying to annoy my neighbors in a semi-original way

I dl this album, listened to some of the tracks and haven't got back to it since. I liked some of their previous stuff and in theory I should like this but I agree that it's too... "too much" !
I can't really stand the guy's voice on this and the whole production/arrangements just get on my nerves after a (short) while.

Raconte-Moi Des Histoire came on random the other day and it epitomises what irks me about this guy. I know not all his songs are like this, but I had the first album, and it was pretty good if a bit slow and lacking in oomph, and then the second one had all these cheesy samples that jut out like sore thumbs. Something really euro-90s about his style, kind of reminds me of the same aesthetic Aeroplane went with on their album.

the last thing I think of when I think of M83 is samples, tbh

synth swells and gated drums, sure

no problems with that (although the wet wet drums are enough) but I remember it was the samples on that second album that stopped me enjoying it.

ah I see, there are a bunch of M83 albums I didn't know existed, lol

the previous album had good moments but was already very borderline for me. this latest one kinda jumped the shark (but good for them since it made them famous !)

I think it was "Teen Angst" (can't remember?) but there was loads of screaming samples and these ratty drums that reminded me of bad industrial metal from the mid-90s, and - I dunno, I could tell what he was going for but it just wasn't working.

"Teen Angst" is on the third album, fyi

oh yeah. always forget about the very first one.

listening to Digital Shades atm and am very glad dude discovered drum machines