Test Spin: M83

Weren’t the ’80s just totally tubular? Didn’t the decade have just the cutest fashions? Wasn’t John Cusack totally swoon-worthy in Say Anything? Yes, yes and yes — and M83 agrees. During a period of the ’00s when the ’80s are so totally hot again, it sounds like Anthony Gonzalez (a.ka. the dude behind M83) wants in.
In fact, on his latest record, Saturdays=Youth, it sounds like Gonzalez is feeling a little nostalgic for the days passed when Rubik’s Cubes still blew everyone’s minds. On the LP, Gonzalez explores the well-traversed terrain of synth-pop, but gives it a comfortably operatic, shoegaze sheen that both old and new M83 fans can appreciate.
Gonzalez employs the same voiceover girl as on 2005’s Before the Dawn Heals Us, and V.O. Chick eerily narrates the interlude of his Go Gos-esque single, “Graveyard Girl,” as if she herself were the tortured protagonist in a Molly Ringwald flick. Gnarly, dude!