Hi everyone, Bigthony Handtano here, the internet's busiest music nerd, and it's time for a review of this new Madeon album, Victory.

Madeon is an electronic music producer and songwriter who hails from France, but has been based in the US for a minute now. He is now on his third full-length album. It's been about six-plus years since his last— seven, really. And even though it has been a while since his last project, Good Faith, he is kind of sticking to his electro-pop guns with this new record, which is a very trim one at 30 or so minutes and just 10 tracks, with a couple of features of course.

Now, again, even though for years now, Madeon's main axe stylistically, you could say has been electro-pop, that sound and influence is taking on a much different form on this new album. In fact, I would say the production and aesthetics of this record are getting so aggressive and loud and distorted and compressed and saturated that we're really kind of transitioning over into electroclash territory some of the time, even dabbling in some sounds and vibes from the bygone era of, you know, bloghouse and indietronica DJs. I'm sure some are categorizing this record as, like, some indie sleaze revival, if you will. Something I couldn't fully tell was going on from the teasers to this record, but now that I hear the entire album, the influence and direction is pretty clear. Still, that doesn't mean that Madeon drowns or gets lost in the crowds of artists that are kind of chasing after a similar vibe right now.

And it certainly doesn't mean that there aren't some standouts and highlights on this record that are worth going over, like the opening track and a fantastic single from this record, "Hi!," which is a crunchy, hard-hitting, guitar-driven dance rock banger with just some pounding drums, incredible riffs, cute refrains and choruses. It's got this hard-hitting, bratty edge to it, but simultaneously, there's something kind of adorable about it too. It's short, it's sweet, it's to the point, much like the rest of this album. The following, "Car Crash Baby," is like really that peak indie sleaze DJ party energy coming back in full form. Honestly, not only do some of the vocal passages read to me as like something you might hear on an old classic Death from Above 1979 song, but like this could easily be a single that was dropped on the connected Last Gang record label from back in the day.

After this track, we have the song, "Super Platinum," featuring Erick the Architect, who actually adds so much to this song. His pitched, deep vocal refrains actually bring so much to the drops on this track. And again, while this song may run at a very trim 2 minutes and 30 seconds, the grooves and drums are hard-hitting, they're heavy. Clearly Madeon is trying to maximize impact in a very brief period of time with these songs, not deliver these expansive EDM odysseys where you're kind of like growing and building over long periods of time.

Like, even though these are tracks that fuse together elements of electronic sonic music and pop music, they kind of rage and run very directly like rock songs do. It's following this track that I feel like the album starts to run out of gas, or at the very least, new and exciting ideas, or the inspo it's pulling starts to manifest in some super derivative and kind of uninteresting ways. "Dancing On Your Grave" has the energy of this hopeful, kind of anthemic millennial pop party anthem, but maybe more fuzzy and aggressive on the production side. There's also something about the writing and vocals reminds me of many tracks off of Porter Robinson's last album, which obviously there are some major connections between these guys, so I'm not too surprised to hear that influence.

But with that being said, Madeon's take on this sort of combination of sounds and influences isn't nearly as dynamic or versatile as what I've heard in the past. Meanwhile, "Somebody Else," which I think is a decent song at its core, also leans very aggressively into these heaping layers of distortion and fuzz on nearly everything in the mix, as well as a kind of like claustrophobic EQing and compression approach to the balance of all these different elements in the mix, which leads to a lot of these songs sounding very bricked out, very loud, in such a way to where it leads many of these tracks to sound very same-y on the surface and really kills any sense of variety across the tracklist.

Weirdly though, the following "Fire Away" featuring Slayyyter, who, for an album of this flavor, going in this direction, is kind of like the perfect feature. Not only is Slayyyter's vocal approach, and her latest album cycle, quite loud, quite aggressive, really matching the energy of a lot of the tracks that kick this album off— also, like, Slayyyter's music in this current album cycle is also very much kinda doubling down on this indie sleaze-boon, and clearly seeing a lot of benefit off of that— but this track here is so underwhelming, so bland, and so toned down in comparison to the way this record opened, and even a lot of the highlights from Slayyyter's new album, that I kind of wonder why they teamed up in the first place. There was so much potential for this track to be absolute fireworks. If any song is going to be a blowout sonically, it should be this one, and yet it's somehow one of the most mild songs on the record.

I do think things pick up a bit more with "Chaos Magic," which is a really interesting combination of sounds and aesthetics. For one, there's this big group chorus to it that has almost like kind of a Europop flair to it, which again, given Madeon's roots, is not really really a surprise. And there's also a grandiose finish to this one that's worthy of any main stage EDM festival performance. But leading up until the halfway point, the way this track kicks off, it feels like another piece of fuzzy, obliterated blog house dance music that's worthy of a post on Gorilla vs. Bear. It really undergoes a series of evolutions.

The back end of the record is kind of mixed vibes, honestly. A few more times I feel like we get tracks that, maybe at their core could have been better or more appealing if the songwriting was retooled a little bit, and then everything that was left over was smoothed over so all the sounds and the production aren't just so dang harsh. For a record that doesn't really last that long of a time and is supposed to be an electro-pop, electroclash type experience, it really did kind of like obliterate my ears after a while.

And speaking of nostalgia and throwbacks, there's something about the tune on this track, and specifically the chord breakdown in the middle of the whole thing, that kind of reminds me of Len's "Steal My Sunshine," which is an influence I don't mind, maybe so long as the song and the instrumentation itself is allowed the chance to kinda breathe a little bit. The only real sonic oasis we get on the back end of this record, and really on the whole album entirely, is the closing track "Lonely Space Age," which is really this lone, spacey, atmospheric French house moment that is a very brief and decent listen, but doesn't really hold a candle to the greats that clearly inspired this sound, and honestly comes across very simplified, very neutered, very brief, in a way almost forced.

Because for the most part, nearly all the tracks thus far on this record lack a lot in terms of like nuance, subtlety, dynamics. And I think Madeon saw this one track as like the sole opportunity for him to work like a soft or kind of epic moment into the record. But all that happens is this song really just feels so out of place and tacked on, on the end. Look, overall I feel like there are some great highlights on this record, it certainly starts pretty strong. "Hi!," "Car Crash Baby," and "Super Platinum" are especially good.

But there's not really a whole lot going on with this project in terms of the big picture album experience. On that front, the whole thing is very one-note, and feels like a various collection of odds and ends that have pretty different levels of songwriting quality. And the only real thread that seems to bring all of them together is that for the most part they're very loud, they're very direct and to the point, and they just have a super aggressive sound and mix quality. So, with that, I'm feeling kind of a light to decent 6 on this one.

Anthony Fantano, Madeon, forever.