Dryvetyme Onlyne

M83
Saturdays=Youth
Mute; 2008

The fact that musicians borrow copiously from their historical influences is nothing new; in fact, to borrow well is often what sets a really solid band apart from a rather average one. Jimmy Page co-opted much from Mississippi Delta blues to create the raunchy guitar licks in early Led Zeppelin, and, in turn, Jack White looked to both Page and those same blues guitar players to craft the dirty, yet brilliant, lo-fi rock of The White Stripes. Folk musicians for the past 40 years have patterned themselves after an amalgamation of Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and other ’60s counter-cultural crooners to results that produce decidedly divisive opinions (often even within the same person, one Conor Oberst). To top it off, music reviews such as this one consistently draw up comparisons between the band under review and whatever acts the reviewer dreams up in order to provide his/her reader with some sort of musical context.

So, what happens when a band eschews the “I want to sound like [insert band(s) here]” ethos and instead ascribes to an “I like [insert musical era here]” mantra? Well, it might result in Saturdays = Youth from M83, an album that serves as principal songwriter Anthony Gonzalez’s personal ode to the 1980’s. Not content with merely creating a record that seeks to shape each track like a separate ’80s musical influence, the group seemingly preferred to loosely harness slips, slices, selections, and swaths of New Wave, Goth, pop, and early shoegaze into this glittering release. Track after track swims in luxurious keyboards, shimmering guitars, breathy vocals, and thick reverb that threatens to overwhelm (but never quite does).

Yet, as attractive and appealing as Saturdays = Youth is, there are times when it nearly buckles under the weight of its own ambition. When three songs on an 11-song album clock in at a minimum of six minutes long each, a case can be easily made that Gonzalez needed to engage in a little bit of editing. While the rich sonic spaces on this record are evidence of both a master craftsman and an appropriately reverential fanboy, not everyone can be Robert Smith and create Disintegration. Nevertheless, with cuts like “Graveyard Girl” swirling with The Smiths influences and “We Own The Sky” affectionately nodding at Cocteau Twins, M83 has fashioned a record that both fans of the ’80s and those who actually lived out the music of the ’80s will wholeheartedly enjoy.