Flights Of Fancy

Frenchman's expansive ninth album wistfully yearns for the 20th century.

- Jeremy Allen

M83 

Fantasy 

4/5 

Other Suns 4863733 (CD, 2LP)

What happens when eternal teenagers hit their forties? Making a mature-sounding album is out of the question, so in M83's case we get an extended offering that serves up nostalgic reverie with some characteristic adolescent moodiness. Fantasy is recalcitrant in its refusal to acknowledge our current reality, choosing instead to inhabit a place one has to seek out somewhere in the imagination. It's an album that requires us to make a leap of faith and immerse ourselves in it to truly experience its goodness. It's a safe space where clear blue waters gush from springs eternal, with no fewer than three tracks referencing the ocean in their titles.

Back in 2016, Anthony Gonzalez confounded expectations when he followed up the highly regarded double-album Hurry Up, We're Dreaming with Junk, a quirky, slightly-wonky synthpop album full of eclectic collaborations with Beck, Steve Vai and Susanne Sundfør. Released five years after his perceived chef d'oeuvre from 2011, it didn't have the desired impact commercially, generating some navel-gazing on 2019's DSVII, inspired by vintage arcade games full of largely ambient excursions. M83's ninth studio album, then, sees. Gonzalez pull on a grotesque latex mask on the cover, as if to say, listen but don't stare too hard. The disguise allows him impunity to explore and an anonymity to spread out in.