The Musicgoer: M83's Saturdays = Youth

M83
Saturdays = Youth
(Mute)
**** 1/2 (out of 5)

The Saturdays that the title of M83’s new album refers to belong to the long, lazy weekends of 20 years ago—those teenage days when you felt at once invincible and depressed, living in circumscribed surroundings but feeling panoramic emotions. And if you were French electronic music king Anthony Gonzalez, you were watching The Breakfast Clubover and over again, wearing out your Simple Minds and Cocteau Twins albums, and dreaming of the day you could afford some really good synthesizers and start making music that sounded just like it—only, you know, more epic.

With Saturdays = Youth, that day has arrived for Gonzalez, who’s even lined up Cocteau Twins collaborator Ken Thomas to produce it. The results are sublime, especially the achingly pretty “Skin of the Night” (featuring Morgan Kibby’s stretched-thin vocals) and the uptempo headfiller “Couleurs.” Even the closer, “Midnight Souls Still Remain”—11 minutes of slow, repetitive Enoisms—haunts more than it annoys.

Saturdays = Youth is a nerdily nostalgic project, I suppose, not unlike the ceramic elephant lamp Anthony Michael Hall talks about making in The Breakfast Club, with one big difference. This one lights up.