M83 @ Black Cat
George Wildman Ball hit the nail on the head when he said bluntly, "Nostalgia is a seductive liar." While that may be true, it does not mean that the “seductive liar” cannot be a powerful creative force. Take Anthony Gonzalez (a.k.a. M83), for example. The Frenchman has mined the sounds and styles of his formative teenage years to great effect. In an interview with Spinner, Gonzalez reflects, "I don't know why I'm fascinated with this period of my life…I discovered so many things like new music, new movies, my best friends. Also, [I had] my first encounters with drugs and my first experience with sex. For everybody, being a teenager is one of the most important periods of life."
As one might expect, the majority of the Thursday’s set was composed of songs from M83’s most recent album, the excellent Saturdays=Youth. Saturday, at least in theory, is a day without work, a day of minimized stresses, of sleep, relaxation, play, and selfish indulgence. As an adult, a Saturday can be our closest approximation of youth; a time in our lives when responsibilities waned, and guiltless pleasure was possible. Gonzalez not only embraces this idea on his new album, but he is able to distill it into a (mostly) cohesive set of 12 songs using a broad range of '80s influenced styles.
Gonzalez has been explicit about the fact that he set out to create a concept album that is steeped in nostalgia for the music and emotions of John Hughes-style '80s films. In the past, M83's song have featured many of the tropes used by bands such as My Bloody Valentine and the Cocteau Twins; obscured breathy vocals, lots of reverb, distortion, and layering of guitars or synths. And while these influences are still present on Saturdays, it is much more a pop album than anything he has attempted before.
In addition to Gonzalez, the live iteration of M83 featured a drummer shielded behind a sound screen (which I’ve never seen before at the Cat), vocalist Morgan Kibby, who sang on the album, and your run-of-mill shaggy blonde guitarist. Kibby and Gonzalez squared off just to the right of center stage with a neon black-lit effects box and keyboards separating them. The lighting was static, pink and dark, making the custom-built effects box a focal point for the scene. (A better light show would serve them well at future gigs.) Gonzalez, wearing a black Spider-man T-shirt, took the stage by himself to start the show.
"Run Into Flowers", off of 2003’s Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts was the first song of the set. It features M83's typical "wall-of-sound" approach to building a song, with layers upon layers of synths creating a beautiful and intense fuzz of melody. The song ends with the repeated line of, "Give me grace and chemicals, I wanna run into...," which imbues the song with lethargic crescendo. Surprisingly, the vocals on the song were not performed live. On a few other tracks, pre-programmed vocals were used as well, which seemed odd given that Gonzalez and Kibby didn’t look especially busy at any point and sang live on the more recent songs.
Much like "Run Into Flowers", the song "Teen Angst", played near the end of the set, pushes forward with a dense layering of guitars and synthesizers. As a result, the repetitively inane lyrics are drowned in a sea of swelling fuzz. While the older stuff is more ambient and simple, songs from Saturday=Youth have a poppy verse-chorus-verse structure, with lyrics and vocals that are more pronounced.
“Kim & Jesse” is the current single from Saturdays, and was the forth song of the set. It was followed immediately by the buzzing arpeggios of M83’s next single, “We Own the Sky”, a song that builds to a deafening peak of Kibby singing, “It’s coming, it’s coming now. What’s coming, what’s coming now?” Both were crowd favorites.
Actually come to think of it, there were very few weak songs, due in part to the fact that the set list was essentially a greatest hits compilation. “Skin of the Night,” a Kate Bush influenced slow burner, was the only real downer and not because it’s a bad song necessarily, but because it didn’t really fit with the pounding songs in the rest of the set. The powerful “A Guitar and a Heart” was the final song. Any fan of M83 would have noticed the omission of the eight and a half minute stunner “Couleurs”, so it was an obvious choice for the one-song encore (Does anyone else hate that encores are obligatory now?). While the song starts big and keeps growing on the album, the live version started small with the two guitars and grew to a euphoric climax. Feet were trampled as the hardcore fans near the stage jumped to the beat. When the song ended, the lights stayed dim and Gonzalez bashfully thanked the crowd before leaving the stage.
Notable omissions from the set...
"Untitled": Cinematic, literally. The song has been used in film and television.
“Slowly”: Off M83’s self-titled debut album, consider it a precursor to “Couleurs”.