The Daily Spin, March 20
M83 | Fantasy
Welcome back to the Daily Spin, the series in which I review 365 albums during 2023.
Each album will be given a rating on a scale from 0 to 10. You can look at the entire set here. Additionally, you can check out a list of my favorite song from each album right here.
If you want to suggest an album, good news! You can do so right here!
This is my second review for M83 - you can find the first here:
Album: Fantasy (2023)
Artist: M83
Link:
Nine albums in, Anthony Gonzalez finds himself reinventing the wheel - and yet it works, taking the best of what he’s learned in his quest to become the premier shoegaze electronica producer and making it into something beautiful.
With Fantasy, Gonzalez makes it impressively clear how talented and multifaceted he is, looping in such a variety of genres and sentiments that the entire album feels scattered and cohesive all at once - a galaxy of locations spiraling through the cosmos.
The clear standout is ‘Laura’, with its anthemic guitars and chanting chorus under a wobbly keyboard synth that plays to each strength throughout the song absolutely perfectly. The second half of the album as a whole plays stronger than the first, leaning into a very vaporwavey sort of synthpop feel that just tickles my brain in all the right ways. When I look to synthpop, this is a titanic effort, particularly as the record goes - normally, an hour of this sort of music doesn’t translate nearly this well, but that’s the strength behind M83’s work.
Rating: 9.4/10
Best Tracks: Laura; Sunny Boy
Worst Tracks: Deceiver