A grounded galaxy

The artwork for M83's excellent fifth album, Saturdays=Youth, features photos of sun-dappled teenagers trying on a half-dozen varieties of rebellious Caucasian beauty. The girl in the picture paired with the lyrics for lead single and album standout "Graveyard Girl" is a dead ringer for Molly Ringwald circa Pretty in Pink. The photo provides support to M83 auteur Anthony Gonzalez's description of the song as a tribute to John Hughes movies—support that comes across as slightly gauche, since the song is perfectly capable of speaking for itself. An ode to the precocious self-involvement of that sweetly storied stereotype, the goth chick, it's awash with post-punky electric guitars and a curiously not irritating children's choir cooing "yeah yeah yeah" at the edge of the mix. It's the kind of work strong enough to be bolstered by a breakdown featuring a female voiceover that concludes, "I'm 15 years old and I feel it's already too late to live. Don't you?" And it's certainly the most typically, successfully pop moment this difficult, often transcendent act has ever produced.

More thoughts here.