“I'm fed up with all these albums paying tribute to the 80s because, in general, the 80s are really treated as kitsch and as a cheesy decade-- and people love that. But for my part I consider the 80s in a really serious way, and there is no irony at all in my musical relation to the 80s. So yeah, I really can cry when I listen to a Kate Bush song or Simple Minds."
- Anthony Gonzalez
From the deluge of 80’s rehash unleashed on the masses in the last five years, few works have come off as remotely sincere and uncontrived. Although M83’s Saturdays=Youth doesn’t fully pull it off, next to Lansing-Dreiden’s The Dividing Line, it proves to be one of the most convincing efforts. This album is clearly a love-letter to a decade and its music, but the album’s strength is also its weakness.
Unfortunately, Gonzalez wears his influences on his sleeve here, which can be a bit too obvious at times and can get distracting. Some songs are easily traced to their source of influence – from Cocteau Twins to Simple Minds to Kate Bush, the songs wear a thick coat of aesthetic similarity to their ancestors. What ends up saving this album from triviality is a genuine nostalgia for the feeling of being young in those days.
The kid in the skeleton suit on the cover somehow evokes images of Donnie Darko, and just as that movie embodies the 80’s without getting lost in trying too hard, Saturdays=Youth does the decade justice in capturing the emotiveness of youth in the decade, where youth was naïve godliness, without pretense or overindulgence.
