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Midnight City
M83
Hurry Up, We're Dreaming
2011

♥: Sometimes I find/pick up on songs ages before they become incessantly-played radio hits (cough). Sometimes, though, I come way late to the song-party; this seems to be one of those times.

I've liked M83 for awhile -- the first time I remember listening to them was in 2007, at my mom's house for my 21st birthday party -- I'd kicked my mom and V out of the house for the night, and a few of my friends (including Julie) came over with booze, weed, Super Nintendo, and music. My friend Kat put on M83's "Car Chase Terror!" and I was stunned speechless. What strange new electronic magic was this? Even though the voiceover was fairly cheesy, I was hooked. I downloaded everything I could find when I got back downtown, and had an amazing musical experience with -- to this day one of my favourite fall songs -- "We Own the Sky" in October '08.

But M83's been getting hipster-popular, as have most bands I like, in the past while. And it's not that it changes my ultimate enjoyment of the music -- but I gotta admit, when a band I like (not love) gets to the point where everyone ~cool~ has them on their iPod, I tend not to leap to their new stuff immediately. So while I'd downloaded Hurry Up, We're Dreaming when it was released last year, I only unzipped it this week -- and then, only because The Buzz has started playing this song -- and I think it's been on the airwaves for awhile. And you know what? Sometimes it's nice to be late to the party, because everyone else's musical-ejaculation over it has faded slightly, and instead of feeling somehow possessive of a song that's become popular, I can have my own experience with it.


So, my own experience with this song is that: when I first heard it, it sounded like something I'd heard before, somehow -- like, not similar to something else, but legitimately a song I'd already heard, but hazy, like I'd only heard it in a dream. It got stuck in my head, it got under my skin, it attached itself to my veins and pulsed. It's a really kickass example of the type of electronica I most love: layered, melodic, explosive, expansive, building, with hooks and vocal structure. I just REALLY LOVE, LIKE REALLY LOVE, THIS SONG. I love dancing to it in my room, I love blasting it in my car, I love hearing it on my Senns, I love unwittingly playing it back in my head, I love that they pull off the saxophone at the end (unlike a certain opening band we know) -- I love every little bit of it.