M83 - Before the Dawn Heals Us

The fun continues with another one of my favorite releases this year, French electronic ex-duo (now one man group) M83's Before the Dawn Heals Us. My giddiness for this album could not even be depleted when I heard one of the album's best songs, "Don't Save Us From the Flames", in a Pontiac commercial. The whole thing is synthy, breathy cotton candy.

I really want to call it emotional, but then I think 'emo', and all those nasty images of myspace.com self portraits. The ones you can tell the kid tried to get perfect for hours, so their hair would fall in their face oh so tortuously so you can, like, see their pain, man.

The album is almost completely electronic, and my guess is that most people don't listen to much electronic music because it can seem cold, distant, and inaccessable. There's something almost less than honest about a recording made from machines. But M83 have this sort of otherworldly aplomb that makes it all a spectacular burst of (completely human) science fiction.

A lot of recent music gets credibility for being ironic or cool or dancy, but M83 kind of toss that all out the window and make something gorgeously genre-less and completely memorable. And, horror of horrors, moving.