Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming

Oh Midnight City, I remember you! Side one is an atmospheric recession pop affair. This feels like one solid indie alt jam session and I'm not super into it. It's really the space synthesizers that I can't seem to stomach.

Sleepy and lush, dreamy and emotive, acoustic cutting against electronic for a pretty ambience, somber feeling but overwrought. Too much of an ok thing.

Hurry Up, We're Dreaming is an album that captures a specific vibe, like the Chromatics' Night Drive album, and like that album it's a cool urban night. M83 mash an assortment of genres together, there's synthpop, synthwave, dream pop, ambient, new wave, shoegaze and even a little bit of space rock and post rock, but despite wearing their influences on their sleeve they actually manage to create something quite unique from the combination. Primarily though the album is a dream pop soundscape that's achieved through the synthpop and synthwave elements on the record.

The first half, and especially the first few tracks, have a variety of bombastic hit pop songs, most notably Midnight City, and this helps set that aforementioned night urban atmosphere. The album does not keep this pace up and it's for a more low-key and textured sound for most of the album, to a point where it borders on ambient at time. This will probably come as a disappointment to some people but I actually like this, they found the specific sound they were looking for and went all in on it. The songs all have a lot of room to grow in terms of sound (which I think is caused by the spacier elements from the album) but it gives the album a melancholic and wistful tone that elevates the atmosphere of the album.

There's still a lot of more straightforward pop inbetween all this, U2's style of new wave was clearly a big influence for M83's sound on this album and it shows on these tracks. These are the songs that stick out the most, and really are probably the only songs I'd listen to outside of the album. Hurry Up, We're Dreaming is more than the sum of its parts and as a result most of these songs aren't going to work well outside of the context of the album.

Should it be in the main list: No, but you could make a case for it

Top 3 songs: Midnight City, Reunion, Steve McQueen

3.5

Midnight City's the only one on here that ever really broke containment. This whole thing's highly representative of that specific indie pop kind of sound that the 2010s were dabbling in.

French electro, not really my tasse de thé, nor my confiture, but decent enough as background music.

Not sure why every track seems to have someone trying to do an impression of a duck on it.

I think that, like their homophonic mates MBV, their sound becomes overwhelming and numbing, and when the album is 75 minutes long it just becomes kind of boring. I know that's the point, but it lacks the ebb and flow of, say, Pink Floyd. But the songs work well on their own.

Absolutely iconic synthpop album. The whole thing is just such a wholesome, nostalgic vibe.

Familiar with some of the songs on the album, good modern indie music, just suffers from being too long an album.