M83 "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming" [2011]

Toward the forefront of a sub-genre what should rightly -- and oh, so wrongly -- be called "soccer-chant disco pop," M83 manages to combine a multi-decade collection of bad ideas in electronica: the moody-robot bleat of Kraftwerk from the 70s, the artificial hairspray sheen of the 80s, the grandiose arena pomp of the 90s and the zillion-track gluttony of the 00s. Oh, and they throw in a little mellow beard-rock from the 10s, even though they try to disguise it by adding digitized, druggy-sounding movie soundtrack sap. M83 is clearly interested in earning their techno street-cred (to whatever extent bands like Spacemen 3 actually matter to anyone anymore, or ever), but they're even more interested in getting radio play and performing in big, giant arenas so people can wave their lighters to their Coldplay-on-Nyquil "anthems" of filler between heartless attempts to recreate the album's first single. These guys have all the facelessness of Muse, but without the rock guitars; they're an unintelligible version of MGMT. Then again, who needs to actually understand a soccer chant in order to be able to shout it like a brainless lemming?