Photo by Tim Saccenti

“Being a teen—I've said this to you so many times—was the most beautiful thing in the world.”

Yes, Anthony Gonzalez has said this to me (and countless others) so many times. And if he seems a bit self-conscious, it’s for good reason. Though big-ticket indie rock is almost invariably nostalgic, no other band hits on teenhood with the precision, force and frequency of M83. Gonzalez’s last two LPs, Saturdays=Youth and Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming, consciously placed themselves alongside other totems of adult-scripted teen dreams like the movies of John Hughes and Smashing Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. And there is some melancholy and sadness when the 33-year-old speaks of the beauty of his adolescence in 2014. Because while a decade of increasingly successful music has allowed nearly all of his teenage dreams to come true, he hasn’t had much of a chance to enjoy them.

Growing up in Antibes, France, in the late 1990s, Gonzalez and his friends eschewed their country’s native pop music, instead obsessing over American culture and specifically the American dream. His experiences since have confirmed the lessons of that period’s most obvious post-American-dream sob story: “Mo Money Mo Problems”. “Midnight City” was the breakthrough hit that eluded M83 for a decade, but even that song’s success was a slow build: Released in August 2011, it didn’t quite spark until the next year. And once it did, a studio project helmed by an insular perfectionist had to evolve into an overdriven touring machine.

A Grammy nomination would soon fast-track Gonzalez’s involvement in the soundtrack to Oblivion, a 2013 sci-fi blockbuster starring Tom Cruise, and when we spoke last year prior to the film’s release, Gonzalez made the opportunity sound like a lucrative, resume-building learning experience at best, miserable at worst. At that point, he wasn’t even thinking about the next M83 record and was “terrified” by “Midnight City”. For that interview, we sat in the same condo he’d lived in since he moved to Los Angeles in 2009—clean and spacious, but abutting a noisy intersection on Melrose Avenue with a dispiriting view of a strip mall featuring a particularly rundown Yum Yum Donuts. So yeah, he would want to revisit a time when his dreams seemed less real. Or maybe he just needed a break.

The new CD/vinyl/digital reissues of M83’s first three albums—replete with attendant B-side and remix EPs—would appear to provide both since they bring Gonzalez back to his teen years in the most literal sense. He was 17 when he started recording demos as M83 and 19 when his self-titled debut was released in 2001. For fans only familiar with Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming or “Kim & Jessie”, M83’s first two albums are probably wholly unrecognizable as the work of the same project.

It wasn’t the same project, to be fair: M83 was still a partnership between Gonzalez and childhood friend Nicolas Fromageau back then. Their debut is a charming-but-indistinct relic of turn-of-the-century chillout electronica and big-beat. Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts, which followed in 2003, was more true to Gonzalez’s original goal: to place himself in the lineage of Mogwai or Sigur Rós, developing a signature post-rock sound for the masses. He and Fromageau succeeded—synths and drum machines were saturated with distortion to sound like guitars, while guitars were denatured to sound like synths. Further incorporating Gonzalez’s vocals and the occasional snippet of movie dialogue and fragmented computer syntax, Dead Cities unintentionally became the most original shoegaze album in years.

The duo’s partnership dissolved after Dead Cities (Fromageau currently records as Team Ghost). A self-described “lonely person,” Gonzalez had already begun to envision what would eventually result in 2005’s Before the Dawn Heals Us, his first album for Mute and a blueprint for the IMAX electro-pop that M83 would cloak in softer pastels or sharper neons on subsequent releases. Though Gonzalez claims it was recorded on a very small budget, it’s the sound of his first major studio blockbuster, split between bombastic instrumentals, mini-movie narratives, and laser-guided pop songs. It’s still his favorite M83 album.

Cynicism tends to be the prominent by-product of the reissue economy’s churn, and that can certainly be an issue here—both M83 and Dead Cities, originally put out on French label Gooom, were previously released by Mute in the U.S. (though they have since gone out of print). Meanwhile, Before the Dawn hasn’t quite reached the 10-year benchmark typically required for reassessment. And though Hurry Up was M83’s most far-reaching record by a large margin, it just made a big indie act a major festival concern. Gonzalez admits: “There are probably a lot of people that think ‘Midnight City’ is my first single, but I felt like people know it wasn't my first album. I hope so!”

That said, he recognizes an opportunity, not just to familiarize new fans with his excellent, lesser-renowned previous records, but to recreate a 90s-style attachment with physical records that most would be tempted to just own digitally. Ask why Saturdays=Youth wasn’t included in these current reissues and his reasoning is sound. “Saturdays is still available everywhere, but the first three albums weren't—you could find them, but you had to pay a ridiculous amount of money.” This can seem naive in light of how easy it is to hear M83’s music in some electronic form nowadays, but look at the highly stylized and foreshadowing cover art for all of these records: They are meant to be held, stared at, and placed for display.

The reissues can also seem like a way for Gonzalez to buy time. No one seems to know when the follow-up to Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming is going to hit, though Gonzalez is working on it. Though unwilling to reveal any specific details, he cops to revisiting the synths he used on Dead Cities as of late and jokes that the result might end up being his “angriest” album. Meanwhile, he spent about six months recovering from tearing his Achilles during a soccer game recently and finally ditched Hollywood for Silver Lake so he could get the kind of isolation and quiet that typified the Before the Dawn sessions.

His home studio is still in construction, so for reasons that are not quite clear, we meet at Levi’s Haus in West Hollywood, a somewhat-charming monument to branded content. The locale is more a picture of what a guy dreams about when he moves halfway across the world to make it big in L.A.—four cars in the driveway, an enormous photo of Ad-Rock circa Licensed to Ill performing with a beer can pressed against his groin in the foyer. Anonymous Top 40 plays over the stereo, including a song called “Coconut Sofa”. I’m not sure you can actually buy anything in this place, but a couple of assistant types mill about. “Anthony will be ready in 20 minutes,” one tells me. He’s there five minutes later, ready to discuss the inspiration, successes, and failures of the first phase of M83.

Pitchfork: How did M83 start to take shape?

Anthony Gonzalez: I was playing in a high-school band called My Violent Wish. Nicolas [Fromageau] was on the drums, and I was on guitar and vocals. It was very Sonic Youth, Blonde Redhead, Mogwai, very guitar distortion, post-rock, spacey, violent, and super fun! It was an amazing period of our lives, being teenagers and free and excited about everything. We made a couple of CDs. I have them, but I don't think I will ever release it. I found my very first demo a month ago, maybe I'll put that out. There's some quite good tracks on it.

Pitchfork: What inspired the shift from guitars to electronics?

AG: I bought a synth to try it out; I was bored with guitar. I made this demo in my bedroom when I was 17 and sent it to a few labels in Paris. Gooom responded, and my first reaction was to ask Nicolas to help me because I didn't feel like I had the shoulders to carry the project on my own. We were listening to the same stuff and it was always easy to work with him.

Pitchfork: What was your goal when you started working on that first album?

AG: We wanted to get a review in this one French magazine. That's it. We got it very fast—and it was a pretty good one—so we were excited. More seriously, we wanted to try to create a sound that was our own. I remember the first time I heard Sigur Rós—I was blown away because it was something I never heard before. They had their identity, and we wanted to have ours. For our first album, we recorded everything on a shitty eight-track recorder. It was just no budget, but who cares? We were making an album and we were super happy with that. The less commercial the album was, the better for us. We didn't want to be big.

At the time, I was in college and delivering Chinese food on a bike, just spending my free time smoking joints and making music in the garage. I was studying music, but it was just an excuse to make my parents happy. I never thought I would do anything but be in a band.

Pitchfork: If you read the song titles of M83 sequentially, it tells a little story—"Last Saturday night at the party, Kelly, sitting, facing that violet tree, staring at me, I'm getting closer, she stands up, caresses my face, 'I'm happy,' she said"—was that an intentional thing from the start?

AG: Nicolas and I were always fascinated with '70s psychedelic music where there's meanings in the tracklistings, and there's always a hidden track somewhere in the album. There's something like this on any album of mine.

Pitchfork: Is the “Kelly” in that story based on a real person?

AG: No, it just sounded very romantic for us because it was an American name. We were just lurking on American music and movies. The idea of the American dream was always there, so that was part of the story. We were listening to some French bands, but every time a singer would sing in French we would find it very boring. It had to be either instrumental like Mogwai coming from the UK, or coming from America. For us, that's where the sound of rock was coming from, and we wanted to be like that.

Pitchfork: Did you feel like the album was a success at the time?

AG: I mean, sales were terrible on the first album, but we really had amazing press in France, which is kind of funny. I feel like France really loved the first album, but they hated the other ones, and it was almost the opposite in America. But it's a first album! We didn't know what we were doing. It's as simple as that. I mean, I can't listen to that [record]. It's impossible. I can still listen to Dead Cities, though.

Pitchfork: What it was like for you and Nicolas to live together during the recording of Dead Cities?

AG: The Paris apartment we were living in was so small, and we had a window [to record] between 5 to 9 p.m. because after that you couldn't make any sounds. It was a really bad period for me. We were working in the music industry—I was selling albums on the phone for the label PIAS. I was calling all the stores in Paris to say, "Oh, I have the new Garbage album, how many do you want?" I was really happy because we [worked with the label] Kranky, so we had all the Godspeed You! Black Emperor records, and it was super fun to try to sell that to my favorite stores.

Pitchfork: How did you envision Dead Cities building on the self-titled record?

AG: We just wanted to have something really cold in terms of sound and atmosphere. Not dark, but cold. Something full of soul, but also soulless. We really tried to put more love into the melodies and the ambience, and our goal was to almost treat the synth sounds like a guitar—very harsh, a lot of distortion, where you get punched in the face when you listen to this bassline. We wanted this album to be hated by our parents.

Pitchfork: How did you create the vocals that begin the record on “Birds”?

AG: It's a computer talking. I remember Radiohead did it before us, and we were so jealous. We wanted to have some kind of storytelling throughout the album, starting with something very dreamy, but also weird and strange. That was the best way to dive into the album.

Pitchfork: Many bands use the word “Untitled” for a song name, but not “Unrecorded”—what is that referring to?

AG: "Unrecorded" was the name of the demo we had, and we kept it. Listening to this track back, it's almost created by mystic people in Poland in the middle of the woods—something that would never be released—so that's the reason why we kept “Unrecorded” as a title. Even if "Birds" is the first track of the album, we wanted "Unrecorded" to be the big opener, something almost stadium-like.

Pitchfork: You’ve always stressed how influenced you were by American culture, so what about “America” led you to give that particular song its title?

AG: I don't even remember the song. [laughs] I remember never really liking it. We almost didn't put it on the album. I feel so bad that we have to listen to it. [I play “America” on my phone.] I have no recollection of this track! It's like I tried to erase it from my head.

Pitchfork: Did you get anxious once this record got some attention in America?

AG: No. It was pleasing to hear. When the album came out, we only had press in Europe, and then we were going on tour, starting in New York. We opened for the Rapture, who were complete dicks with us. We shared the same huge dressing room and we got kicked out of it.

Pitchfork: Was it just the two of you playing live?

AG: Yeah. We were doing a lot of small festivals in France, our first show, actually, was a thing with Fad Gadget in the south of France. M83 in France was just for Parisian hipsters. We were trying to play shows outside of Paris, and it was a disaster! Nobody would show up. It was [seen as] very elitist, like, “smart” music, in a way, and we hated that! For us, we were still very melodic and emotional and strong. That was the start of my breakup with Paris.

Pitchfork: Was there any point where Nicolas and yourself started to realize how this record was going to affect your career?

AG: We wanted our album to be listened by people, but we never had the ambition to be big. The success of the first album was already big enough for us as two kids from a small town from the south of France where there's no music scene. Of course, when the second album came out, we started to play more live shows, more festivals, became more involved. We stopped working and completely committed to being musicians all day. Even if I don't like to say why it went wrong—because I don't think many things went wrong between Nicolas and I—this is the moment that we started going different directions.

Pitchfork: What direction did Nicolas want compared to what you wanted?

AG: I was secretly anxious about sharing [M83] with Nicolas, because it was my project at the start and I wanted to be more free musically and in my career. Even if it was amazing to work with Nicolas, there's nothing I like more than working alone, and this never changed. I don't have any regrets, having done these two albums with Nicolas. It's the opposite! I feel like it was just fantastic. But I was craving independence and freedom.

Pitchfork: How did he handle the talk where you told him all of this?

AG: I will always remember the setting, the time, and the location of this conversation we had—it was in a cafe in the old town of Nice. It was just not a good day. Nicolas is super smart and he took it very nicely. He could have yelled at me, but, no, he understood. I think he was also super motivated to do something on his own. So it went well, but it really broke something between us. After that, my relationship with Nicolas changed.

We still write to each other. We still call each other. But people have to understand that we were doing everything together, and after that, Nicolas moved back to Paris, and I moved to the south of France to focus on the next album.

Pitchfork: Where was the cover art for Before the Dawn Heals Us shot?

AG: I think it's an aerial shot of Bangkok. Jean-Philippe Talaga, who was the boss of Gooom, was a super-talented graphic designer, and he always did the covers and was very opinionated about what looked good. The visual aspect has always been important to us—when you go to the record store, the first thing you see is the cover.

Pitchfork: How did you alter your creative process to ensure Before the Dawn differed from records you made with Nicolas?

AG: To be fair to Nicolas, I didn't want to come up with the same sound because I feel like that was something we worked on together. I wanted to try to change the drum tracks, for instance, and replace all the drum machines with a proper drum kit. I could've never done this album without the help of Antoine Gaillet, who produced it. We just locked ourselves in a house that we rented for two months. It was two hours outside of Paris, in the middle of nowhere. There was absolutely nothing, and it was beautiful—we were just making music all day. I had the songs, but if you compare the final versions to the demos, Antoine really created an alchemy between the drums and the bass and the synths. Everything is glued together beautifully. It's a very unlyrical album, but also very powerful.

Pitchfork: This album gets described most often as “cinematic,” what movies were you influenced by at the time?

AG: I always wanted things to be cinematic since the first album, but I just wanted this one to be more vibrant, more melancholic, more! I was just making sure that I was staying true to myself and to my influences: a lot of Tarkovsky science fiction films, David Lynch, and Gregg Araki, as well. Big storytelling, dialogues—not from movies this time, but proper dialogue that we recorded, that we made sure were truly original. So we wrote all the dialogue and made it sound like old films. There was a lot of work on the atmosphere, sounds of fireworks, children playing at school. All that was recorded by Antoine and I, completely original samples. I never worked that much in my entire life. I wanted this mix of big-sounding songs with way more minimal and more sentimental tunes.

Pitchfork: “Don’t Save Us From the Flames” and “Car Chase Terror” are connected by their imagery of car accidents, what inspired that theme?

AG: I was obsessed with David Cronenberg’s Crash. There's always been a connection with me and driving—I used to watch a lot of road movies, like Paris, Texas. There's something about being alone in your car and driving somewhere deserted that's always stuck with me.

Pitchfork: While making the album, did you ever think it was sounding too big?

AG: It's never too big. At that time, everything electronic was like Warp Records—Aphex Twin was huge. It was time for me to come up with something different from that, more prog-rock, aggressive. A lot of musicians were working on computers, and I didn't want that.

Pitchfork: What does “Teen Angst” mean to you, outside of the song itself?

AG: It's hard for me because I was never anxious as a teen. Being a teen was the most beautiful thing in the world. But the fact that it is hard to find your spot and be yourself—that's what I wanted to express throughout the song.

Pitchfork: This your first album with Mute—did you feel like you were under more pressure now that M83 was an established act in the indie world?

AG: I didn't really feel that way at the time. I was so protected by Mute that I didn't feel any pressure. When I released [Hurry Up], or even Saturdays=Youth, I was so anxious the day of the release. But with Before the Dawn, I didn't even know the release date. I was just very relaxed. I also had no idea what kind of game we were playing. I was still new to the industry. I thought all the bands were cool with me. I thought all the people in this industry were fantastic. There were no sharks. Even now, honestly, when I hear people talking about the music industry, I think, “Well, we're not doing the same job because I've never met these people.” Maybe people are talking behind my back a lot and don't say things to my face.

So I was just very naïve, maybe, but also happy to be able to have the chance to put an album out. And I was really confident with this album. It's still my favorite. There's something very special about it. I remember listening back to it for the first time with my manager at the end of the session, and it was like, “Yeah, that's cool. I'm going to sleep well tonight.”

Pitchfork: Which is your least favorite M83 album?

AG: I would say Saturdays. I feel like I could've done much better. And it was a fantastic adventure. It was my first record with [keyboardist/vocalist] Morgan [Kibby]. I worked with [producer] Ken Thomas, who is truly an amazing person. I had so many laughs with them. But I felt like I was failing, and I was expecting something terrible.

Pitchfork: What's the most hurtful thing someone can say about your music?

AG: That it's overdone or too emotional. It probably is, but at the end of the day, I'm just trying to exist as an artist. When you're a musician and you release an album, you have to accept the criticism—and I accept it! But it's something I'll never get used to. I wish I could go back to the time when I released Before the Dawn without any fear. Now, it's like I'm already stressed about the reviews of my next album, and it's not even done yet. And the social media thing is new to me. Facebook is fantastic because it gives me contact with my fans, but I feel like it's not about the music anymore—it's about how many friends you have on Facebook and your Instagram pictures. I hate that. I feel so bad for the talented new bands that are working so hard, and they have to fight with these monsters where it's all about the appearance, the way you look, the amount of posts you did this month. I don't want to be a part of that—going to a festival and taking a selfie on stage and all the EDM shit. I feel like it's such bad publicity for music and for true artists, and I'll try to fight as hard as I can to not be like that.