The 2KDozen 500: #10 - M83, "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming"

I wanted to listen to the new Trailer Trash Tracys album, "Ester", but it's not out yet and I lack the shiver to hunt it down at the moment. But I've listened to "Engelhardt's Arizona" and it's lovely.

I can't quite get my cramped little head around how many bands are twisting my knickers around the same dreamy impossible sounds at the moment. I fear it; I maltrust it. But once I can hear the album properly, I will dribble my venomous half-thoughts and jizz about it to my tiny heart's uncontent. (Shit! Just seen they're playing at Kraak on the 14th! I'll immediately send a Post-It note to the parallel self that could conceivably attend, Dommie Darko.)

So thwarted, I turn to M83. I liked their first album, then away I drifted. I waved to them as they went floating by, playing a misguided set in the middle of the day at ATP at the Pavillion stage at Minehead Butlins. Listening to the palm of their hand I was not. But again, I've heard more good things and there's that tune that's running in the 2.15 at the Olympics and sounds a bit like Utah Saints had another stab at Kate Bush; so again, I listen with patient ears cocked to the cosmos.

This album punches the airspace marked for Ratpack aircraft, for barbituate-numbed Balearic drift through Bespin purple clouds, where New Order play skiprope with the Breakfast Club and New Wave types with defiant hair and no socks on mate like twin hermaphrodites on the foaming beach. It's time to roll up your sleeves and stare out moodily over the ocean. Immersion into the ambience is the key. Wade out up to our genitals and we can fuck with the stars. Just watch out for the spent condoms bobbing in the backwash.

"Soon, My Friend" sounds ready to ride off into the sunset in a Maori western, suitcases bursting with string quartets. "New Map" sounds like Klaxons (Not Centaurs) on less grainy drugs with a couple of extra flutes. "OK Pal" should be Glasgow, but it's "No Trouble In Little China" with a thousand suburban Karate Kids somnolently going through the motions in a hazy remake of Enter The Dragon. "Another Wave From You" opens up another golden lunchbox of kickass for the serotonin glands, closing titles of a great August night out. Synths for synapses, these lads.

"Steve McQueen" is a bit boring. But then I find Steve McQueen a bit boring, so...

Maybe this is all an illusion from the Brett Easton Ellis B-Movie that I watched the other night. Maybe we're all vampires and the party is never going to end for any of us. We'll fade out into the ether to a twenty-one keytar salute. Boo yah!

Rating: Glistening out of The Ocean