THURSDAY, APRIL 24, 2008
Many people would like to forget their teenage years, but in reality our teenage years define our behavior for the rest of our lives. Well develop different habits and sometimes reform, but what we became during those embarrassing, confusing and glorious years will stick with us forever.
In Daniel J. Levitins book This Is Your Brain On Music the neuroscientist wrote that many older people, well into deterioration via Alzheimers Disease, still remember how to sing songs they first heard when they were fourteen. When any generation labels music of a certain time our music, they usually mean the music they heard during their teenage years (even if they didnt like it at the time). For example: my last year as a teenager was 2001. I kind of liked Banditos by The Refreshments (a song from a relatively unknown band thats 12 years old and even back then I thought shouldve been bigger), but I really liked the video. Now I love both and have the song on one of my many 90s rock playlists on my iPod.
Coincidentally, Anthony Gonzalez (vocalist, keyboardist, bassist, guitarist, pianist and vision behind M83) enjoyed his last year as a teenager in 2001 also. Saturday is definitely the coolest day of the week, says Gonzalez. Saturdays always reminds everyone of their youth. Thus the focus of the new album titled Saturdays=Youth.
With Gonzalez at the ripe old age of 26, one might expect to hear Days of The New mixed with some Toadies and Spacehog (I know, Im scaring you with the 90s references), but instead Gonzalez focuses on what a Saturday soundtrack would be for kids coming of age in the 1980s.
New wave sounds and synths galore dominate Saturdays=Youth (along with ambient pop and shoegaze aesthetics) naturally. Gonzalez along with producers Ken Thomas (of Sugarcubes, Cocteau Twins fame) and Ewan Pearson (who produced work from The Rapture and Ladytron) pace the album in line with the trajectory of life as a teenager from start to finish.
Robotic drums and otherworldly guitars inform songs like Kim & Jessie, filling the quiet sections with My Bloody Valentine-like airy vocals. Too Late captures the melodrama that dominates the days of the typical teen. We Own The Sky, one of those rare things in pop music where the song actually fits the title, fills its five minutes with the sound of summer and celebration laced with atmospheric synths and vocals.
Dark Moves of Love, with its call-to-arms drumming, recalls the final hurrahs and last days of youth followed by the come down of Midnight Souls Still Remain with its mournful, droning synths signaling the last days of escape and the first days of discovering romance.
The highest peaks and the lowest valleys are what make up the life of an adolescent and M83 have articulated that better than anyone could in words. The 80s influence might make you think of a lost John Hughes film on first listen, but the angst overflowing in these piece of pop art is something we can all relate to. - Stephon Johnson
