It's hard to imagine finding much to fault in an
album that professes a serious devotion to the likes of the Thompson Twins and
Kate Bush, but it's also hard to imagine taking such an album seriously. Credit
M83, then, for gazing back at the '80s and escaping the revivalist void that
traps so many different acts with so many different intentions.
In an ethereal bit of illogic, Saturdays=Youth sounds entirely and
nothing like the '80s. There's no mistaking songs such as "Skin Of The Night"
and "Graveyard Girl" as being rooted in any other time, from their hooks to
their moods to the ways their guitars jangle in service of synthesizers at work
in the foreground. But then, there's no mistaking anything on the album as
having been recorded any time other than now. M83 has fancied big sounds since
rising up in France as a strange sort of sensuous post-rock act in 2003, but Saturdays=Youth boasts a
more expansive sense of space, by a lot. And it serves in terms of songs as
much as sound design: For all the awe kindled by the effectively perfect sound
in a transcendent highlight like "Kim & Jessie," the real triumph is that
M83 uses such a setting for more simple melody and emotion than ever before.