M83
Harry Up , We' re Dreaming

The time for change comes for everyone. In music, a band's change of direction is often met with both apprehension and extreme interest from critics and fans alike. This moment has arrived for M83 (alias Anthony Gonzalez) with the new album "Harry Up, We're Dreaming", which should mark the hypothetical consecration of the band from Antibes, France.

My expectations were high for this 5th album and (almost) nothing about this work lived up to my long wait. It results in an album composed of 22 tracks, a physical CD divided into 2 parts, and a number too high of songs that, in my opinion, makes the work a bit too fragmented. The premises were already interesting at the sight of the tracklist, where the opening and closing tracks of the work, "Intro" (feat. Zola Jesus) and "Outro", definitely stood out. The first is a true milestone, one of the few strong pieces of the work, where you're certainly led to think "Wow! Great start!" and the expectation grows more and more. Anthony Gonzalez's voice urges you to "Continue! Continue!" while the whispers of Zola Jesus (Nika Danilova) convince you that "We need the Stars... a new World". The "Intro" is truly something splendid, in pure "Before the Dawn Heals Us" style, and moreover, it is closely linked to the second interesting single of the album "Midnight City", the 2nd track of the work. The lyrics are mainly centered on the anticipation "of a roar" where "the city is my church". The song undeniably harks back to the sounds already expressed in the penultimate work "Saturdays=Youth", an album containing tracks like "Skin Of the Night" or "Kim & Jessie", which alone could be worth the price of the CD; in this expansive work, however, it lacks the perfect masterpiece, which could perhaps be one of the first two tracks.

Afterward, the interest gradually wanes in tracks with illusory clout like "Reunion", the semi-ballad "Wait" and "Claudia Lewis" where the screams in full Peter Gabriel style make these tracks not very "M83 brand" but very 80s dancey. The experimental "Raconte Moi-Historie" might seem interesting, where the voice of a child narrates his fantastic adventure to the listener; here, in fact, it seems like listening to the fantasies of Gonzalez, who in a recent interview, mentioned that he doesn't care about being bothered by real life because "I would rather live forever in an imaginary world". Numerous are the interludes in the work (6 tracks under 2 minutes) that might seem, to some listeners, of useless functionality, but that present a magnificent example of an imaginary journey conducted by the album to the interested observer's eye.

In the second part of the work, tracks such as "Ok Pal", "Steve McQueen", "New Map" and the previously mentioned "Outro" are noteworthy; interesting yes, but they do not quite make a full impact throughout their duration. The rest is flatness on a large scale.

Partly disappointment, partly subjectivity, but in the end, what strangely returned to my thoughts was the magnificent collection of poems by Eugenio Montale named "Ossi di Seppia" where the residual, illusory man is described. He who creates a thousand expectations around himself, but in the end has very little to show for...