Two discs, seventy-two minutes and probably as many layers in some of the tunes on the sixth studio album from M83. If one were looking for descriptors, it'd be hard not to flirt with cliché to describe 'Hurry Up, We're Dreaming' and whilst clichés are best avoided, Anthony Gonzalez has a gift for scavenging them and forming something great. His last album 'Saturdays = Youth' is a master class in this.
After the 'Saturdays = Youth' tour ended, Gonzalez relocated from France to the USA. Hints of the shift break through lyrically and in the track titles, but it's most obvious in the mixing and production. 'Saturdays = Youth' was grandiose, but intimate in an 80's europhillic kind of way - 'Hurry up...' comes across more like a series of genre exercises written by someone who's unashamed of his new Hall and Oates infatuation. If this sounds like an epic slating, it's not intended to. Yes, Hall and Oates wrote some crud, but they put out some memorable tunes too. Every now and again while I was listening to this record, I'd get 'Electric Blue' by Icehouse (Iva Davies and John Oates) stuck in my head. This record has that kind of 80's LA hit machine shine, only mastered a ton louder and with a s**tload more Krautrock and MBV influence.
Regardless of the genre he's messing with, the tunes themselves are magnified, hyper-emotive creatures. It's the sonic equivalent of looking at a tiny portion of a massive object through a magnifying glass. It's great you can get lost in a world of sometimes very beautiful detail, but it also hides some repetitive songwriting ('Graveyard Girl' = 'Reunion' or 'OK Pal') and sketches, rather than songs ('This Bright Flash'). This is especially true when the songs are played individually, rather than running through an entire side. Gonzalez' formulas and sketches still lay waste to most of his contemporaries though. Also, 'Hurry Up...' doesn't have anything as immediate as 'Kim and Jessie' on it, but it comes close in places.
Personally, the gateway tunes into this were 'This Bright Flash' (a bit of a sketch as said before, but pretty massive in context) and 'Wait'. It's a record that demands you at least listen to one whole CD to get the most out of, but for certain is one that given time to process, will reward.
