Before the Dawn Heals Us — M83
Mute
2005
Rating:


M83 — a solo group now that Nicolas Fromageau has left Anthony Gonzalez to man the synthesizers — couldn't possibly be expected to top last year's electronic epic "Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts," but Gonzalez comes close with matching that album's grandeur with "Before the Dawn Heals Us." Where the glacial cool of Sigur Rós was once the group's most obvious influence, M83 now expands its taste to include My Bloody Valentine. "Moon Child" contains an unearthly choir, the patient beats of a ragged drum and the fuzzy guitar of Kevin Shields, while "A Guitar and a Heart" is certainly the greatest piece of shoegazing since the 1990s. "Don't Save Us From the Flames" climbs a bigger wall of sound than MBV ever attempted. Pounding keys, wails of "Tina!," disturbing lyrics about pieces of brain in the narrator's hair and a screaming, human-sounding synthesizer ever evolve until the density nearly becomes beautiful white noise. The title of "Teen Angst" belies its angelic melody and relentless beats that often give way to transcendent sighs. By the time the album closes with the magisterial opus "Lower Your Eyelids to Die with the Sun," M83's "Before the Dawn Heals Us" does exactly what its opening lyrics promise: it makes the universe glow.

Posted Sunday, July 3, 2005

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