Tools
w/Ulrich Schnauss
Sun Sept 19, Neumo's, 9:30 pm, $12 adv/$14 DOS.
It doesn't take Nostradamus' prognosticating powers to predict M83 will become the next band to wow those who'd prefer to experience music in planetariums. After all, M83, the French duo of Anthony Gonzalez and Nicolas Fromageau, named themselves after a galaxy, and their music aspires to transport you to distant realms while plucking your heart strings till they fray with the overwhelming sincerity and passion of it all.
Stranger Personals
It's official: The emo virus has infected new shoegazer rock. Spearheaded by bands like Explosions in the Sky, Mono, and Sigur Rós, this burgeoning movement exchanges shoegaze's typically emotionally numb bliss-scapes for flamboyant displays of heart-on-sleeve songwriting--often sans vocals. M83 are the latest 'gazers to step into the arena, which they fill with grandiose, quaintly electronic prog rock that's richer than the sauces in their native country. The band's sophomore album, Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts (Gooom/Mute), has skyrocketed M83 to the upper reaches of college-radio chartdom and is winning converts from both the indie-rock and electronic-pop sectors.
While most critics have been blathering about M83's resemblance to shoegazer deities My Bloody Valentine and wafty ambient waifs Air, M83's forerunners are actually '70s synth popularizer Jean Michel Jarre and Tubular Bells composer Mike Oldfield. Tracks like "On a White Lake, Near a Green Mountain" and "Gone" evoke an almost dizzying melodrama, soaring to heights even Hollywood composer John Williams might consider gauche. In other songs, the ponderous space rock of late-era Pink Floyd blusters and drones its way through your headspace like a cement dirigible.
Throughout Dead Cities, pathos competes with corniness, and the effect can be exhausting. Only on "00078h" does M83 approximate MBV's swerving kineticism (recalling Isn't Anything's "Sueisfine"), on which M83 whip wispy vocals into a frothy goo of androgynous phonemes. But more typical is disc finale "Beauties Can Die," a massive, twinkling miasma of sound; it's the aural equivalent of being hit with a dozen klieg lights at once while standing atop Mount Kilimanjaro. For some, the effect may be all too much; but for those who think Cocteau Twins were too bare bones, Dead Cities will sound heavenly.
It's funny to hear Gonzalez describe M83's creative process, which, as anyone who's heard Dead Cities would guess, appears to be terrifyingly complex. In reality it's quite simple.
"I always start with a melody," he deadpans. "I try to find something interesting, and then I turn it around." Ah, you see how easy it is?!
In one interview, M83 cited Sonic Youth, Can, and Tangerine Dream as inspirational bands. "I like to mix these influences to obtain something between ambient and noisy music," Gonzalez says. M83 have succeeded at this humble endeavor and consequently captured the imaginations of many American listeners. In early September, Dead Cities peaked at No. 3 on CMJ's chart and was sitting at No. 6 at the time of this writing, ahead of releases by Björk, the Hives, and Interpol.
"It's unbelievable!" Gonzalez bubbles when asked about his response to M83's critical and commercial success in the States. "It's a great surprise! I don't know if it will last, but I hope so, 'cause the bands I love are mostly American." M83 has a great chance to appeal to older prog-rock fans who can't get enough of symphonic grandiloquence as well as aging shoegazer aficionados and younger types who like spacious music that floats on dreamy waves of heavily effected guitars, until the stereo field is as dense as an Amazonian forest.
It's not surprising to hear what songs Gonzalez would most like to cover, as they embody two facets of M83's own sound--melodrama and blissful ambience: "'Dancing with Tears in My Eyes' from Ultravox and the first track of [Brian Eno's] Music for Airports," Gonzalez says, "because it reminds me a good period of my life."
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