The M83 Concert

I think friends tend to view me as a controlled human being, in the same way they view a corporation with a relentlessly conscientious PR department: nothing gets out to the public unless it's been heavily vetted. The one thing in life though that sends me irredeemably out of control is music. Liquoring me up will get you somewhere, but if you REALLY want to see me let loose, turn on "Boy From School" by Hot Chip, or "Digital Love" by Daft Punk and crank that shit. You will learn things you never wanted to learn, see things you never wanted to see, and experience dance moves that would never, in any civilized society, be considered dance moves. And, while my general style in life includes a heavy dose of skepticism, with a sprinkling of irony, I like my music loud and genuine. And so, when I saw tickets for the ridiculously over-the-top, grandiose, electro-space-rock group M83 on sale, I grabbed four and told some friends that they were busy on June 3rd, whether they wanted to be or not.

The best way that I can describe the music of M83 is to say that each song sounds more or less like what the soundtrack to your life would be if you were constantly having sex during spaceship battles. Every time an M83 song comes up on my ipod shuffle, I envision myself in elaborate science fiction action-romance-dramas saving the world, falling in love, curing loneliness, etc. Numerous times (whether on the C train in the mornings heading to my job as a high school math teacher, or wandering 9th avenue at night) I have broken futuristic laws forbidding human to human contact (because of potential virus infection!) so that I can caress a lover's face or hold a child's hand. Then I go shoot up some bitches with my laser guns. That is the kind of music that M83 makes. The fucking band is named after a type of spiral galaxy in the Hydra constellation for god's sake! But I elaborately digress...

My sister (from whom I get the majority of my musical tastes) and I went to dinner at Sea Thai before the concert. The food was fine, but we sat at a bamboo table near a pond with a Buddha in it, so the whole experience had a tinge of the absurd/awesome to it. My sister got a whiskey soda and I panicked and got one too, then spent the rest of the meal worrying about whether whiskey soda is a drink that only girls get. We headed over to the music hall at 9 to catch the opening act, The Berg Sans Nipple (no clue about the name). They were all right, but a little too heavy on the drums and a little too light on the melody...or tune at all, really. The "lead singer" would say thanks after every song in a manner that made me feel like he was mildly perturbed by the fact that an audience was watching him.

The Berg Sans Nipple's set was mercifully short and the normally interminable set-up time for the main act was minimized due to the fact that M83 had very few instruments. There were two keyboards, a drum set, a guitar, and a transparent box that looked like either a plinko machine or a radioactive hamster cage. Hamster. Hampster. Hamster. Hamster.

Anthony Gonzalez, the only permanent member of M83, entered nonchalantly and set himself up by the keyboard with the hamster cage on top of it. He twisted a couple dials, conjuring up some ambient electronic effects as his band mates entered and positioned themselves by their instruments. Segueing out of the ambient effects, they launched into "Run Into Flowers", one of the best songs from the band's incredible repertoire. I'd already begun to lose it. And by the time they launched into their second song, "Graveyard Girl", the single off their new album, I was dancing like someone was paying me lucratively to do so. My dancing tends to consist of a continuous random combination of the following five moves:

1) Jump
2) Stomp
3) Clap
4) Nod head
5) Thump self on chest

And all of these moves are consistently accompanied by the ubiquitous sixth move: "scream [often misremembered (more often off key)] song lyric". Unfortunately though, I injured my knee over Memorial Day weekend playing incredibly poor quality/ridiculously fun beach football and the jumping quickly became a non-option. So, my dancing included an inordinate amount of stomping (with my good leg) and resembled an upset Scottish child, physically protesting something. All baroque comparisons aside, I'm sure it was pretty impotent looking. But I didn't care.

There was a guy to the right of us with an unfortunate gladiator-style bowl cut, who was obviously under the influence of one or more substances. His dancing consisted of an unending barrage of two moves:

1) Close eyes
2) Freak out rapturously

Any time he did something especially silly, my sister would laugh and point him out to me. I looked at him and felt an uneasy kinship. I would so much rather be him (minus the drugs and haircut) than almost anyone else from the crowd. The majority of the concert attendees stood through the concert with arms folded, hipster frowns marring their gaunt faces. I had no doubt they were enjoying the music, but for some reason they felt it inappropriate to express their enjoyment physically. I wanted to be this guy to my right. No shame, no cares, just an uncontrollable physical expression of ecstasy from something that gave him genuine and deep pleasure. I loved the music and I wanted to spin and scream and shake people until they broke out of their skeptical trances. But just enough decorum remained in me to limit my expressiveness to the usual moderately contained "dancing".

This isn't to say that I spent the entire concert having depressing philosophical conversations with myself about the nature of self-expression and self-consciousness. I let loose in my own modest way and it was wonderful.

Anthony Gonzalez, himself, was a glorious caricature of what you'd expect him to be. He swayed and slithered around the stage, obviously sexually attracted to himself and his music. Numerous times it appeared as if he were giving it to his keyboard in more than just a musical way. My sister thought it was silly and hilarious but I thought it was perfectly fitting. If he had been any less grandiose and over the top than his music, I would have been disappointed. The world is woefully short on self-important artists of mythical proportions that are genuinely good at what they do.

The drummer's internal monologue was definitely a repeated utterance of, "I may be suffering from male-pattern baldness and wearing a polo shirt but I will rock your fucking genitals off," and the back up vocalist/keyboardist resembled a hot mad scientist with her frizzy hair, glasses and wild demeanor. Mikey made a good point that the guitarist looked more or less like our friend Caz: small, shaggy, and wearing a Polska t-shirt.

M83 struck a perfect balance by playing all of the incredible songs from their new album, as well as a surprising amount of old hits. After they demolished us with my favorite song from Saturdays = Youth, "We Own the Sky", my sister turned to me and, without any adornment, said, "That was really good". And it was. It was so fucking good.

Once it was over, we stumbled out into the street and headed towards the L train. The concert had been incredible. The only thing I had missed was a closer personal connection to other people who loved the music. I appreciate that my friends and I have diverse and rarely overlapping musical tastes but sometimes I just want someone to love something as much as I do. I love that good music makes idiots out of people and I wish there were more people around me who get as idiotic as I do over the things I love.

On the train ride back, I sat across from some white boy hip-hop posers. At one point, a girl wearing a relatively revealing plaid skirt entered the train and sat down next to me. The posers were unabashed in talking about the girl and her clothes. They looked right at her and spoke to each other about how she looked. She was wearing ipod headphones and so was I, but I could tell what they were doing, so I hit pause and listened. I couldn't tell if she could hear them or not but she certainly didn't make eye contact with them. I got really sad at that point about men and life.