Molly Ringwald in "The Breakfast Club"
(Credit: Paramount )
The brainchild of Frenchman Anthony Gonzalez, M83 captures the same synth-heavy, angst-ridden melancholy of the acts that helped make movies such as “Pretty in Pink” and “The Breakfast Club” cultural touchstones for a generation. M83 aspires to be the soundtrack for a new set of listeners struggling with their own perils of growing up.
From the menacing dance-floor march of “Couleurs” to the droning Cocteau Twins tribute “Highway of Endless Dreams,” the new M83 album, “Saturdays = Youth,” is the sound of summer 1986 retrofitted for 2008. The dreamy atmospheres of the blissful “Graveyard Girl” belie lyrics torn straight from a teenage diary: “Wise and silent / Waiting for someone to love me / Waiting for someone to kiss me / I’m 15 years old / And I feel it’s already too late to live / Don’t you?
The album-closing gentle ballad “Too Late” plays like the perfect prom-night slow jam, the tune that would play as Molly Ringwald and Andrew McCarthy find the courage to share their forbidden love with the world. Now where did I put my VHS copy of “Sixteen Candles”?
See M83 keep the spirit of Duckie alive at the Echoplex on May 20.
