Anthony Gonzalez, mastermind and frontman of French band M83, is often lumped in with dance music, but that isn’t exactly what he does. His compositions aren’t structured to have much pull in an actual dance club. He’s occupied with making the drive home from the club and the morning after as cinematic as possible.
When it comes to his influences, Gonzalez seems to share more with film directors than with other musicians: He started his career by making music that felt of a part with the neon hues of Michael Mann’s urban crime fables, and later grew fascinated with evoking the teenage innocence and wistful nostalgia of John Hughes’ 1980s comedies.
His latest album, “Junk,” is his first one that actually sounds like a pop album. As fellow countrymen in Daft Punk did with “Random Access Memories,” he turned his creative eye to the production and aesthetics of the 1970s, and made an ambitious record bursting with hooks and laced through with smooth-jazz sleaze. On the first North American stop on this stretch of the “Junk” tour, he returned to the State Theatre, where he performed a jaw-dropping, sold-out concert in 2012. With a set that favored his two most recent albums, he combined maximalist pop, frenzied dance music and rich instrumental stretches.
The film-director influence, however, also never felt far away, whether it showed itself through the visual wonder of the dynamic light show or the dramatic shifts in the tension and moods of the music. A song with the slow-burning, outsized emotion of “Wait,” for example, might rise slowly from the scattered ashes of a high-octane dance number like “Sitting.” Performing in front of a lively quintet, Gonzalez acted the rock star, hopping around while playing guitar and keyboards. Because of the lush sounds of his albums, he may always be known as a studio geek, and he did some of that, too, turning knobs and unplugging-and-plugging cables to dictate the flow of his compositions the way a conductor might for an orchestra.
Although some of the “Junk” songs, “Bibi the Dog” in particular, are too chirpy to settle comfortably into the band’s 1980s-soundtrack set, other songs let the record’s silly, shag-carpet vibe shine through. On “Road Blaster,” one band member wailed on a tenor saxophone while another accompanied him on a double-neck guitar – now that’s commitment to a particular. This song, like several, took a left turn into a concert-friendly climax that was not on the album, giving the show an extra gear. “Midnight City,” the band’s biggest song, needed no such twist. The crowd was jumping from the beginning and delirious by the song’s explosive finale.
M83 played on a crucial evening of the Republican National Convention, and while most bands would have commented on this one way or the other, Gonzalez refrained. Nor did Gonzalez say a word about the recent tragedy in Nice, back in his home country. Indeed, the audience barely even got a “how are we doing, Portland?” The concert was pure escapism, and much needed at that. In that respect, the directorial influence was all Steven Spielberg or George Lucas, and the performance was a true summer blockbuster.
Robert Ker is a freelance writer who lives in Portland.
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