Every band, especially when it comes to electronica, have to find their own balance between melody and mood, between traditional songcraft and the build-up of atmosphere. With their most recent album Saturdays=Youth, French group M83 managed to find the middle ground between these two ideals and create a record full of epic pop tunes and instant emotion. As the record’s title suggests, these songs are the sound of adolescence, full of loneliness, fear and excitement; and that’s not just because their heavy 80s influence means most of them could be taken straight from a Bratpack movie.
M83 – ‘Kim and Jessie’
Recreating rich sonic soundscapes in a live arena is never an easy task and tonight M83 don’t always replicate the all-encompassing sensation of their recorded output. They also suffer from the same problem as many of their electronic counterparts in that watching artists press buttons on laptops just isn’t that interesting to watch – it looks a bit like they’re checking their emails and if you wanted to see that you could just stay at work and stick your headphones on. But lead singer, songwriter and chief musical architect of the band, Anthony Gonzalez, still gives it all he has and at least ends up looking like he’s engaging in a particularly exciting online gaming tournament.
Having said that, the band still carry off an exhilarating and varied set, relying not just on the synth pop of their latest album but also throwing in the shoegaze, dance and ambience from their earlier records. Things even get a bit prog-rock at one point, helped in no small way by the enthusiasm of whoever’s running the Scala’s lighting rig this evening. The climax of the show comes with an outstanding encore Saturdays=Youth’s centrepiece, the instrumental ‘Couleurs’. I’m left invigorated and wishing they would play on just so I could continue to dance away the energy that M83 have so skilfully injected me with.
