The world can already collapse, that Anthony Gonzalez continues to do his thing. Increasingly encased in that fantasy world – wow, I didn’t even take two lines to mention the title – which takes (us) back to an analog adolescence, wrapped in tube televisions, VHS tapes and records that were beginning to squeeze the storage capacity of a CD. Like this. Nothing on his ninth album is new, although it does convey (perhaps more than ever) a clear disdain for today’s tolls and a determined commitment to unbridled reverie – only two cuts are less than four minutes – which places him much closer to “Before The Dawn Heal Us” (2005) than of “Junk” (2016). Syntheses and guitars at full blast. Shoegaze of the 21st century. Escapism without flanges.
Living up to his name, “Fantasy” (2023) is an album that is as welcoming as it is also exempt from that adventure that he himself proclaims in the remarkable single “Oceans Niagara” (“beyond adventure!”, he exclaims), because his nostalgic retrofuturism is like a warm immersion in amniotic fluid, or rather like a return to the shell of any middle-class adolescence between the equator of the eighties and the nineties. Full comfort zone. Like watching several episodes of Stranger Things at once, wow. Nice and resultón entertainment. His three-way work with keyboardist/saxophonist Joe Berry and producer Justin Meldal-Johnsen (Beck, Paramore, St. Vincent) exudes liberation but also a certain self-indulgence, although his cuts surely work as a live shot because They seem designed for him.
The evocative keyboards (up to 37 synthesizers are accredited) that shine so much “Water Deep”, “Us and the Rest”, “Earth To Sea” o “Fantasy” (somewhat reminiscent of the most baroque moments of Daft Punk) coexist with the metronomic mood, sometimes bordering on kraut, of its most dynamic moments – my favorites –, such as “Deceiver” o “Sunny Boy”or with the sax of the melosa “Laura”rounding off a job that will more than satisfy the followers and feed their shows, but it will not be the best gateway for those who have never empathized with their argument.