M83 @ The Empty Bottle - 5/29/08

Riding the wave of a popular new album, Frenchman M83 (Anthony Gonzalez) is in the midst of a 14 city American tour including a two show performance May 29 at The Empty Bottle in Chicago. As a fan of both '80s music and electronic music, M83’s new album Saturdays = Youth is right up my alley. But still, the live show far exceeded my expectations, making it an early contender for one of my favorite concerts of 2008.

In the studio, Gonzalez creates most of M83’s dance rock sound on his own. But on tour, he’s being supported by a full band including drummer Loic Maurin, guitarist/bassist Pierre-Marie Maulini and keyboardist/vocalist Morgan Kibby, who is the female singer on many songs on the new album. Since being released April 15, Saturdays = Youth has been receiving high critical praise. Its songs range from dreamy synth pop to '80s new wave to all-out electronic music. With that in mind, it makes sense the record was produced by both Ken Thomas (Cocteau Twins) and Ewan Pearson (The Rapture and Ladytron).

During the course of the hour-long show, the band ran through a lot of new material including the album’s the first single “Graveyard Girl” and “Kim & Jessie,” both of which sound like they’re straight out of a John Hughes movie (It seems every review of Saturdays = Youth mentions Hughes in some way or another. Not only is the music '80s-inspired, the lyrics speak to teen angst and a girl on the album cover does look a lot like Molly Ringwald). The band also played a lot of high energy dance-driven jams with rich sonic textures, thumping bass and fevered drumming. Among the highlights was the new electronic instrumental “Couleurs.” For being such a high energy, dance-heavy show, the crowd was relatively lackadaisical with most people just nodding their heads back and forth. But I was at the early show, so it may have been a different story when they took the stage at 11 p.m.

Here’s a slideshow with some photos and audio from the concert. This is one of M83’s older songs “Don’t Save Us From the Flames.”

And here's some more standalone shots.

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Jim Collins
Jim Collins follows Chicago's live music scene for the Windy Citizen with his Live Wire blog. He recently graduated from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism with a master's degree in new media. Prior to that, he worked as a reporter for one of the Sun Times News Group's suburban newspapers and a small daily in southwestern Michigan. Jim's also a music junkie, who appreciates a wide range of musical tastes. From hipster to hippy, raver to rapper, he likes it all. More