M83

Since his 2001 debut, Anthony Gonzales has continued to defy a categorical label, and with every successive release, his identity slips further from the fingers of those in search of one-word solutions. As integral as the ethics of electronica may be for Gonzales, who records as M83, many of the artist’s finest moments draw heavily on the warped guitar-pressure of early British shoegaze or the Zen-like drone of ambient post-rock. The truth of this notion holds firm on M83’s fifth album, the dreamlike “Saturdays=Youth,” whose simultaneously sunny and spacey atmospheres buoy the album to stunning highs.

Throughout the album, Gonzales hints at some sort of dramatic theme underlying all the layers of glassy synthesizers, and he anchors most of the tracks in beds of tonal allusion to the transatlantic dance pop of the mid-80s. In fact, most of the album’s tracks reek so heavily of excess that, after a first listen, it’s difficult to discern whether “Youth” proposes homage or parody. Gonzales clearly understands the nostalgia associated with such eagerly retrospective arrangements, but in trying to plug listeners into that same nostalgia, he also recalls the vapidity and gross superficiality that followed in its wake. As a portrait of the West’s last years in the Cold War, then, “Saturdays=Youth” succeeds splendidly, just barely hesitating to spoil moments of glowing artificial beauty with its gluttonous flare for the baroque.

But make no mistake—it’s the beauty that stands out here. “Highway of Endless Dreams” builds steadily upward from a tantalizing guitar progression into an electronic sea that swirls with waves of radio noise and a computer-processed chorus. On “Graveyard Girl,” Gonzales resurrects the perfect moment of the music he reveres. The choruses are so sublimely immersed in living sonics—and balanced ingeniously against verses with little more than drums and vocals—that the transitions between the two are huge, bright, and explosive. The listener can’t help but cringe at the brief, shamelessly emo spoken-word digression of the Graveyard Girl herself, but it’s forgiven by the time “found sounds” and computer whirrs lead it out.

For a band named after another galaxy, “We Own The Sky” seems like an appropriate Reagan-era boast. The track shimmers with hedonistic abandon, flying high on echoing keyboards and the indulgently meaningless mantra, “It’s coming / It’s coming on,” then evaporating instantaneously.

At a staggering eight and a half minutes, lead single “Couleurs” composes “Youth’s” center, transforming from a faintly sinister automatic groove to a wild, desperate, heavily percussive jungle of beats, synthesizers, and rhythm guitar. “Kim & Jessie,” a mid-tempo dance/rock fusion that struts on synth beats, dense keyboards, and distorted guitar riffs, should have opened the album. Instead, “You, Appearing,” a mildly interesting sound experiment constructed over an uninspired piano loop, acts as its overlong prefix, beginning the record without any of the audacity that makes it so interesting.

The standouts of the album’s first half are unfortunately commingled with its worst tracks, including the aforementioned opener and the mirror images “Up!” and “Skin of the Night.” Both tracks rest on shaky, overly repetitive choruses that lack the sumptuous ease and glossy irresistibility that the rest of the album flaunts. The closing track, “Midnight Souls Still Remain,” is perhaps the album’s most problematic song (though arguably a success as a musical version of conspicuous consumption). Clocking in at 11 minutes and 11 seconds of monochromatic ambient noise, it soothes like much of the rest of the album, but it’s difficult to resist the fast-forward button after a didactic five minutes leaves listeners with nothing to look forward to beyond six more of the same.

“Saturdays=Youth” is a triumph in the way Gonzales probably intended it to be. It’s a fractured, uneven work, with vaguely discernable intentions and vaguely decipherable clues about Gonzales himself lurking somewhere in the crystalline murk. The album, like its titular equation and like Gonzales’ work in general, is abstract and broken, to be enjoyed at a distance, where the somewhat vapid fragments take on a more beautiful, organic form.

—Staff writer Ryan J. Meehan can be reached at rmeehan@fas.harvard.edu.