Never having seen them before, it was hard to know what to expect, and, whilst excited, my hopes weren't especially high. Thus, I was blown even further away by the show they produced.
Pre-show my primary concern was that the show would focus on most recent album Saturdays=Youth, which, whilst lovely, wouldn't lend itself to performance as well as its two predecessors. As soon as the synth trill of 'Run Into Flowers', from their first full length album Dead Cities, Lost Souls & Ghosts kicked in to open the set, however, all doubt evaporated.
A far more looped, hypnotic version than on record, they segued from here into a 20 minutes opening 'movement' of sorts, which included refrains familiar from each album, without dwelling for long enough on any to give a feeling that this was just a run through of their recorded material.
They then kicked directly into 'Kim & Jessie', the most straightforward from the Saturdays and wandered back across their 3 albums, ending the section on 'Gone' an etherial highlight of album 2. It was towards the end of the show, however that they struck the heights. With a live version of 'Teen Angst' that actually outdid one of my favorite pieces of recorded music of the decade, and some deep deep rocking out.
The whole gig was so dynamic, that the final burst of 'Don't Save Us From The Flames' seemed the moment to go out on a high. An encore felt almost unnecessary, but I still felt grateful that they came back on. Especially so when the slow burning song they performed actually delivered a perfect cadence following the bombast of what went directly before.
It was one of those gigs that make me want to revise my taste in music. I listened to Eno's Another Green World on the bus home last night, and i think I'll be cracking out the Ulrich Schnauss this weekend. Another mark of how good it was is that, at the end, I had no idea how long they had been playing for. I always find this a good marker of an engrossing show, especially as I am normally checking the time after 20 minutes and waiting for the hit. M83 played for about an hour and a half, which is a long set, and managed to keep the whole audience, as far as i could tell at least, thoroughly rapt for the duration.
The one nagging feeling that I was left with was that they would be better at a festival at night, but I can't really blame them for that.
word should go to the support band from the Scala, whom I actually went to check out for work purposes. They are called The Domino State, and they're bloody dreadful. Deeply uncool and self important, these late 20 and 30-somethings obviously think that they rock, deploying the delay-pedal as if they invented it. Their matching black shirts from Next tell you all you need to know. Listen to your eyes before they play a note and flee for the hills.
