This highly polished five-piece are far from clubfooted. Perhaps their name is more to do with their music sounding like it should be played if you’re getting ready to go out to a club, being at a club or enduring a sordid recovery from a night at a club. But the sounds on new album Heirs & Graces are more than just an expression of the excitement of the nightlife, but also the feeling of escapism that comes with it.
For every scene of picking up and getting back home, there are details of the complications that follow. On the first album it was “All of my friends are kissing each other”, here it’s “How can we be friends now we’ve slept together again?” As per 2010’s debut Gold On Gold, there is an ever-present shadow to bring in that hint of melancholia, like on the opening My Shadow or the sweet single, Heartbreak, which has guest vocalist Chela “standing in your shadow always”. Likewise, Cape Town is a giddy cable-car-ride to the top of Table Mountain with a cheesy chorus declaring “Everybody dance with me, it’s my birthday”, though its escapist celebration comes on the back of heartbreak.
While Heartbreak and My Shadow see the band venture toward a more radio-friendly indie-guitar direction, the bulk of the album mines a steady electro beat that deepens as the album progresses and then winds down at the end with low-key odes to a German model. Throughout, the band maintain their high consistency of potential hits, while both broadening and tightening up their sound. I’m not entirely sold on those bursts of saxophone on the otherwise radiant Cold Rain though. M83, what have you done?
BY CHRIS GIRDLER
Best Track: Heartbreak
If You Like These, You’ll Like This: In Ghost Colours CUT COPY, In Our Heads HOT CHIP
In A Word: Heart-beats
