M83 Saturdays=Youth

M83 is a band that explodes out of the following primordial brew:

France and America (the place, for the former - the feeling of, for the latter);
My Bloody Valentine;
Slasher Flicks;
Weed;
11:00 PM - 5:00 AM;
Cars which are being Driven;
Drum Machines Over live drummers, Every Time;
(This is general:) High School and Its Attendant Feelings.
Cynical Sensualist Romanticism (the heart knows no lies)("they are in love with romance, and illusions")(:This is specific).




(curtain)

CAST----


You, Appearing

Kim and Jessie

Couleurs

Car Chase Terror! (from "Before the Dawn Heals Us")







The other M83 albums end up being very very good for driving. Driving with your jaw set and eyes narrowed. There is an edge or tension or 'drama' to those songs, and one which cycles around. When driving late at night on a empty stretch of interstate highway (I-5), you need something that keeps you looking out out far into the darkness, which approaches just as it recedes, and so looks the same now as it did five minutes ago... you have to be on edge as not to be caught sleeping, or looking too close to where your car actually is, but rather looking out, covering with your eyes the whole road on which you are driving. Other M83 albums are perfect for that driving.

"Saturdays=Youth" is better for a different kind of driving.
driving, still, but driving through a light rain, through mist.
but to a party, no: a gathering, NO: a 'get-together', a small party where you will know, and like, everyone.
there will be records, actual records played. not 45s, but full albums.
whoever is sitting nearest the record when it stops puts on another one. candles, but they weren't lit specially for the party.
there won't be snacks out or anything, but you could make yourself something in the kitchen upstairs if you wanted.
nobody is drinking- we're in high school (it's not that kind of get-together)- we're not like those football players who drink cans till they fall over in a parking lot.
we might end up watching a movie at some point, a movie that most of us will have seen before. the Wild One, or Pretty in Pink, or Nightmare on Elm Street but more probably Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Japanese movies, including but not limited to anime (but your friends call it Manga), or something in black and white ("M" by Fritz Lang would work), or The Breakfast Club, Beetlejuice or the first Batman, or The Crow, maybe even Fast Times At Ridgemont High.
some of these kids at the party have just dropped out of high school. some others won't go to college, even though they could if they wanted.
the get-together is in a basement, but a finished one: carpeted, everywhere. that's why everyone can spend the night.
we just fall asleep when we get tired, about when the second movie we put on is almost over.

It's okay- you've seen this one before.






This album is more human than the others. It has too be- it revolves around (allegedly was ''inspired by''), and produces a sense of, 80's movies- the 80's were the "ME decade", right, so there has to be a Me, or a You that me sees: movies show people.
Sometimes they even show TWO PEOPLE: these are called 'Couples', and they come in a two types: in L- O- V- E, or, Broken Up. One can turn into the other, potentially any number of times, especially in movies (remember WE ARE STILL TALKING ABOUT MOVIES and M83). However, in M83, Couples, when they exist, are always IN L- O- V- E).
As we can witness in Kim and Jessie.mp3. Although, really, Kim and Jessie are just friends. But they do love each other.
SO, beacuse of 80's/(and) movies this album has more voices, and an instrument made of wood, not plastic: The Piano!
The keys more typical of M83 are still here- see Coleurs- but they get plus-piano'ed. The keys/synths M83 usually uses are like an acid-bath wash of synths. Less notes and more chords, with little or no gaps between chords, instead of plunked out, single piano keystrokes.
Right on the very first track, we have this new use of keys clearly presented:
You, Appearing.mp3
On "Saturdays=Youth, we get more pianos, and pianos sound pretty, in the way that crystal is pretty- it could break, it can break hearts. Organs or keyboards have that 'shake' and that vibrato to their notes - think of a Hammond- so keyboards usually sound more tense. This album is about movies where she (read:you) get dumped for someone more popular etc, not slasher flicks like the earlier albums. Slasher=tension=shaking sustained sounds=Keyboards: SIMPLE MATHS. Here, with pianos, and even more so since M83 is in the vein of the 80's, we get The Cure, we get the Cocteau Twins, we get ethereal, pretty, already doomed. As Graveyard Girl says on this record, "I'm fifteen years old, And I already feel it's too late to live.
Don't you?"



Pianos have actual strings, which slowly stop vibrating, the sounds they make literally decay. The first song, as well as the last, have piano. I mean, it's highly likely that it is still a keyboard, just playing on the 'piano' setting. And there are vocals on almost every song, which is the reversal of the normal M83 ratio (mostly no lyrics, some movie-style voice overs, like on THIS older song: Car Chase Terror!.mp3).


My favorite song off this album is Couleurs.mp3- it is tres Depeche Mode. Which means 'fast fashion', correct? Which is now what they call H&M, Forever 21 (which now has guys' clothes GET PSYCHED), Canal Street, etc. So, much like all the stuff we like from the Eighties, it feels perpetually fresh and new, and reminds us of our adolescence too. Something like what M83 must have aimed for on Saturdays=Youth.


M83 has always been like movies; this time it is just explicit. Because it's movies, the last song, it HAS to be so long (over 11 minutes): It's the credits. That time in which you can re-think what you just saw and heard, what you just went through. Other albums of theirs have calm lulls like this, but between songs. Like a movie then, too: you can't have ALL!GO, ALL!THE TIME. M83 gives you the real real intense scenes, but in order that you can handle them, you need rest. At least a contrast: so the lulls (ambient wash, a tone that drones, a soft and soothing loop lain on a loop that soothes softly)inserted between the most bombastic songs. But this CD is not like songs in movies (that would be the previous M83 stuff), but is itself a soundtrack, or better, a movie itself. So, like a movie, it ends with credits.
So, now, finally, you can rest your tired eyes, or, maybe just use the bathroom.

FIN

CREDITS
(in order of appearance)

You, Appearing

Kim and Jessie

Couleurs

Car Chase Terror! (from "Before the Dawn Heals Us")