M83 – “Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming”
The double album was released on October 18, 2011 by Mute US/Naïve.
I’ve been listening to a lot of chill wave lately. What can I say.
M83’s sixth album, “Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming” has been a hard one to review. It’s very… dreamy. Light, almost Peter Gabriel beats make it soft and soothing to listen to, but sometimes, that means the music just fades into the background of whatever else it is I happened to be doing at the time. Some tracks, like “OK Pal” sound like they should be running during the credits of an 80’s coming of age film. But when the album gets it right, like on “Midnight City” (the first single) it work really well.
The double album, I think was overly ambitious, and I would have liked it better if a more rigorous editing was employed to trim the fat, as it were , and have a shorter, but more solid offering. This album was recorded after M83 had completed tours with The Killers, Depeche Mode and Kings of Leon, all of them lending some influence to the style, in bits and pieces, but at times, it makes this record sound a little like an aural patchwork quilt. Sometimes it pieces together nicely, but sometimes, it feels like he might be trying a little to hard, in instead just ends up sounding back-dated by 30 years and ending up more “new-wave” and not “electro-pop” enough for my tastes.
I do did this record though. I’m writing about it, so I have to nit-pick a little, but “Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming” has gotten a lot of time on my iPod this past week, especially while I’ve been in the office. I guess that’s really the vibe of this record; it’s sounds great while I’m working, or while I’m imagining indy movie trailers about people running down rainy city streets, but like the latest Neon Indian album, it’s not a dance-floor-filler. Hey, that’s okay, though.
The video for Midnight City is really cool. Be sure to check it out.
I rate this record a “C78“.
