People used to joke, and maybe I mean "say seriously", that M83tapped into a new Breakfast Club pathos. It was surely, "Kim And Jessie" that did it, all covered in glittering synths and a kind of crushing, downcast gaze that disenfranchised kids found uniquely appealing, while the enfranchised kids were charmed for an entirely different set of reasons. In essence, you can be Judd Nelson or Emilo Estevez, but you both can't stop looking at Ally Sheedy. Cool meet Weird, and Weird meet Cool; now try to forget who is who. This democratic appropriation of the children of the unremembered John Hughes-era was only the beginning. Latest single, "Midnight City", within four seconds one of the best songs of 2011, ports a metronomic synth yelp on the way to a shimmering tribal explosion. There is nothing in here about your lunch or your dad or detention. Forget the distant vocals, muttering truth and nonsense like, "the city is my church", and just keep your focus on the modulated sample from the opening and its screaming, beautiful, final iteration. This rings late, dangerous and certainly after curfew. Calling M83 anything close to a reference to a pop-classic about teenagers from nearly three decades ago is insulting. No high school library will be left standing in the wake of the dark neon of high noon night in the city. This weird beats that kind of cool.
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