Although critics consistently nudge away the term, M83 create high-concept emo embossed with glittery snow angels, packing more synthy bombast than a Tangerine Dream/Mineral mash-up. 2003's Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts found the duo lazing on their backs in an Antibes field, watching stars and birds gently collide above green mountain tops. A pleasingly disembodied traipse through the French countryside, it was a lesson for anybody who thinks electronics have no soul.
After saying "au revoir" to longtime friend/collaborator Nicolas Fromageau, Anthony Gonzalez goes it alone for album three, upping the drama (there's even a track called "Teen Angst") by layering electro-acoustic sci-fi backdrops atop often-campy dialogue (written by his brother), and then buoying it all with by a massive noir choir. From the buzzing nighttime Blade Runner skyline of the cover art to lyrics investigating car wrecks and dislodged brains, this is a mammoth collusion of synth gasps and distorted swirls, darker and more urban than its meadow-bound predecessor. If Gonzalez had gone ahead with only epic Vangelis modulations, Before the Dawn Heals Us would collapse under hollow ponderousness. Instead, he weaves a rock backbone into his tangerine-dream landscape with steady doses of highly effective live drums, gigantic post-MBV guitar, and sharper, more defined songwriting that helps to beef up the diaphanous symphony.
As those familiar with the group would expect, the icy Sigur Rós estuaries and incidental glaciers are ably glorious (as are the commingling interludes, tentative minimalist pairings with children's voices, drifting sound-streams, and assorted channel surfs), but the larger success belongs to denser, more propulsive Kevin Shields-style hooks. Launching amid the urgent, ghostly sighs of "Tina" draped over a frantic drum/synth meltdown, "Don't Save Us From the Flames" is a coiled bit of apocalyptic pop compulsion with a J.G. Ballard storyline: "A piece of brain in my hair/ The wheels are melting." Also built on rock'n'roll, "Fields, Shorelines, and Hunters" punts a precipitous Milky Way barnstorm of cascading feedback, drum buildups, and vocal cut-ups that lead into the even headier "*", which breaks orbit, uncoiling the previous track's static energy with a patch of cathartic shoegaze glaciers from Saturn. (If you close your eyes, you might feel like you're levitating.)
Still, however cathartic, these baroque bursts will more than likely overwhelm listeners pragmatic and/or cynical enough to reject the purple poetry of a John Hughes first kiss or a flitting cliffside Robert Smith love note. It's interesting that M83 don't receive the same sort of "vainglorious" tag as Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes. Borrowing a page from Oberst, Gonzalez even opens the new record with a dramatic monologue: Languid drum rolls and chiming guitar/key-drifts pile up alongside a breathy "They say I made the moon" spoken by American actress Kate Moran, and culminating in "raise your arms the highest they can, so the whole universe will glow." Which, really, is what Gonzalez attempts to do over the course of these 15 tracks. (As we later learn, closing your eyes could perhaps kill the sun). But where Oberst sounds out of place on Digital Ash in a Digital Urn, Gonzalez confidently weds ones and zeros, forgoing millennial chilliness for depth and color.
Which is one of a million reasons why Gonzalez is hard to frame. Not exactly a singer/songwriter or a dance-floor hero, Gonzalez is less about shoegazing or rock-boy myopia than the unbounded and gargantuan romanticism of a Vincent-Gallo-esque auteur: Entering the realm of M83 is less about Mogwai-esque post-rock than it is about going along with the ebbs and flows of Gonzalez's nearly faceless otherworldly flights of fancy.
As with most ambitious undertakings, there are dull spots and moments when the dialogue, sentiments, or other indulgences can try a listener's patience. But more often than not, Gonzalez strikes gold, admirably upping the ante from the subtler Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts and creating a massive, teeming, gaudy edifice that at its best dazzles like its own misty solar system. And even when it implodes, the unintentional fireworks of its collapse create compelling, stunning patterns that leak like colored ink through the nocturnal cloud cover.
