Rolling Stone Australia - May 2016

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NEW ALBUMS.............................Pg. 91

DVDS..............................................Pg. 102

MOVIES........................................Pg. 103

THELASTPAGE......................Pg. 106

French synth-led

nostalgia specialist

gets weirder on bold

seventh album

M83

Junk Pod/Inertia

★★★½

BY ANNABEL ROSS

“Epic” is a word that gets ban-

died about these days with

inane regularity, but it’s an

apt descriptor for the music of

M83, the French dream-pop

outfit masterminded by An-

thony Gonzalez.

His sixth album, 2011’s Hur-

ry Up, We’re Dreaming, was his

most epic yet – a double-disc

jammed with the most expan-

sive iterations to date of his sig-

nature cosmic nostalgia: huge

walls of synths, impassioned,

high-pitched vocals, and a cin-

ematic sense of drama and ur-

gency that held you captive from

the get-go, even as his band

meandered from cutesy pop to

crashing orchestral ballads.

Hurry Up also boasted

M83’s biggest single to date,

“Midnight City”, a track huge

enough to turn Gonzalez from

an indie concern into an inter-

national festival headliner. But

from opening bars of lead single

“Do It, Try It”, it’s plain that

M83

Charts

a Brave

New

Frontier