M83: Saturdays=Youth

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.