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.