Some bands, like The Egg, who I wrote about last month, succeed despite their boring, off-putting, or generally lame names. Their music transcends the band’s failure at this most basic of marketing/branding ploys, enabling the listener to see that, behind this failure lies a band that is worth supporting, dumb name notwithstanding.
The problem with M83 is that their name is so cool that it threatens to overshadow their music. Visually, I think those characters fit well in that arrangement—the “M” and the “3” kind of tease your brain into thinking the name is symmetrical. You have to wonder what “M83” means, but not in the confounding way that you have to wonder about a name like “Death Cab for Cutie.”
I don’t care what Death Cab for Cutie means because that’s a stupid name, nonsensical name; M83, on the other hand, is both intriguing and stylish, and I actually would like to know what it refers to. Is it some kind of erudite, boho French thing that my Midwestern psyche could never understand? Is it actually related to fireworks like it is my head? I don’t know!
I’ve also had this longstanding concern that my fandom for M83, whose entire catalog I own and to whom I have committed many listening hours, derives more from loving their name than loving their music. I probably put more stock in band names than most people, and if that’s you, then maybe you won’t understand this, but for me, having an smart, visually appealing name can overshadow average music. This has certainly been the case for me with !!!, Deerhunter, and Junior Boys. I like these musicians fine, but I like the bands more than their music because of their sweet names. Has this been the case with M83 as well? Am I lying to myself?
After seeing them perform, the answer is emphatically, in all caps and boldfaced, blood-red font, NO. M83 put on an absolutely phenomenal show, adding to and reworking old material and transforming their endearingly cheesy songs into a coherent, moving musical experience.
You have to love a show in which the band plays every song you wanted to hear. By that rubric, M83 gets an A++: except for omitting the song “Asterick,” Anthony Gonzalez and friends performed the set list I would have written. Performing old and brand new songs with equal panache, M83 really drew attention to how consistently good they have been over their seven-year career.
That said, the show’s standouts were all recorded in the last three years. Whatever the dictionary says is wrong: with its sweeping vocal chorus and echoing drums “Moon Child” is the definition of epic. The atmospheric, electro-tinged “We Own the Sky” was both delicate and banging, alternately inciting supplicant arm raising and rager-bro fist-pumping. And though a handful of the subtle shifts and layers of “Teen Angst,” to my mind still their best song, got lost underneath the incredibly loud musical ether they create, that song still managed to tug heavily on the heart strings.
How they made these cheesy, melodramatic songs moving at all, much less beautiful was probably M83’s biggest achievement. The no-one-asked-me-to-the-prom, “Sixteen Candles” motif of “Kim and Jessie” and “Graveyard Girl,” while goofy and ironic on record, are actually quite moving live. I’m a little embarrassed to say that I found songs with lyrics like “Death is her boyfriend/she spits on summers and smiles to the night/I can’t help my love for graveyard girl” genuinely pathological, but given how good M83 played, more than good enough to live up to the promise of their sweet name, I’m just a little embarrassed.
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