“We didn’t need a story, we didn’t need a real world / We just had to keep walking / And we became the stories, we became the places,” whispers a robotic and almost creepy voice at the opening of the intro to M83’s sixth studio album Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming.
The listener then meets the glistening synthesizers and atmospheric soundscapes that shape the album’s 73-minute runtime. While Hurry Up was their first album that reached mainstream success, the French electronic music group formed in 1999 and has been hard at work ever since.
Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming is a two-sided album with 22 tracks, but it packs a punch. The group’s lead member Anthony Gonzalez describes this album as “mainly about dreams, how every one is different, how you dream differently when you’re a kid, a teenager, or an adult.” And he’s right. Each track truly does feel like a dream.
Take “Raconte-Moi Une Histoire,” for example, or “Tell Me a Story,” translated from the French. The song is a spoken-word story told by a little girl, describing a world where everyone becomes frogs and spends eternity jumping around together blissfully. While this story may sound ridiculous, it represents a child’s innocence. The song then ascends into a cinematic instrumental of angelic synthesizers and strings along with claps and other percussion.
Hurry Up relies mostly on instrumentals to tell its story, as most of the tracks have few lyrics. Eight of the 22 have no lyrics at all.
The track titles are often strange and unclear, never even written on the tracks themselves. Titles like “Claudia Lewis” and “Year One, One Ufo” make the listener wonder just what the songs are trying to say, but that is the beauty of this music. Nothing about it is really all that clear or obvious, much like our dreams.
A clear standout track is the first track on the second side of the album titled “My Tears Are Becoming a Sea.” The song feels like it comes straight out of the final scene of a movie, with its soaring strings and heavy, dramatic drums. It leaves the listener feeling a mix of sadness and optimism. Plus, the loud and almost jarring layered vocals somehow complement this soothing instrumentation.
Even the more conventional sounding cuts on the record, such as “Midnight City,” which was inescapable in the 2011 pop-music scene, hold unique characteristics. While the saxophone solo and the four-on-the-floor kick drum beat similar to the synth-pop music style popular in modern music, the high-pitched and almost shout-like vocal stylings and effects add a new flare.
One thing this album suffers from is its excessively long runtime. While lengthy albums work well when done properly, here the songs all start to sound similar towards the end of the second side. If it was cut down a little more, it would have been a more immersive experience, but its cohesive nature makes up for these shortcomings.
The album ends with the powerful “Outro.” The production on this final track makes it feel like the finale of the album, but its lyrics are rather open-ended.
“Creatures of my dreams, raise up and dance with me/Now and forever, I’m your king.”
