I've been trying to get into the new Killers single produced by M83 but it's just not taking. It's not that it's totally over the top or because it's a big song with a big sound and a big heart on it's sleeve, or my general aversion to The Killers. No, my ambivalence is the result of an unexpected time travel experience gone horribly wrong.
A few months back, John Hugar wrote a fine piece about how the process of aging affects how we interact with music, and I thought it was great for a number of reasons, among them the fact that John was looking back on his life and music from his early 20's. As somebody... uh.... older, I got a big kick out that because I too have certainly been pondering similar subject matter, with the added flavor of nostalgia that is inevitable whenever one starts to feel their age. Nostalgia gets out of hand though and easily turns into sentimentality, and it's sentimentality that turns us soft and mushy, which is why I'm wary of nostalgia even though I've lately been awash in it.
Like when I heard that Paul Williams was guesting on Daft Punk's Random Access Memories. I found myself very excited by that announcement, because it seemed like a cosmic convergence, a forgotten figure from my childhood returning out of nowhere on the most anticipated album of the year, the year of a big birthday. Like disco, Paul Williams was ubiquitous in the 70's, and it seemed like he was on The Muppet Show every other week before seemingly disappearing off of the face of the planet once the clock struck 1980, so a collaboration with Daft Punk was preposterous and perfectly reasonable simultaneously.
But then I heard "Touch" and I plotzed. Streaming it off of iTunes, my brain went bonkers with memories and sensations I hadn't felt since the late 70's. It wasn't just the Paul Williams... it was... the 70's. Cuz I'm not THAT old believe it or not, and I only caught the tail end of the 70's, and frankly my memories of the 70's are... fuzzy. I remember specific stuff, but the feeling of that time, not really. "Touch," however, unexpectedly overcame me with long forgotten data: the utter ubiquity of disco in the 70's, shiny and fuzzy variety shows with their lite disco song and dance numbers, the disco trumpet of Chuck Mangione, and the sense that everybody danced in the 70's (even though I admittedly never saw my dad dance)... stuff that I hadn't thought about in ages came rushing back, and that first time I heard "Touch," I felt it. It was almost like time travel. Not Back To The Future or Doctor Who time travel, but it was time travel of the mind, through fragments and memories and sensations back into the forgotten past.
It was more than nostalgia and a memory remembered. For an unspecified period of time (lost time?), I mentally and emotionally went back to the late 70's. It only happened once, that first time I heard "Touch," but it happened, and I'll always be kind of grateful to Daft Punk and Paul Williams for pulling that off. Which brings me back to The Killers, M83, and "Shot At The Night," which triggered a similar mental time travel experience... back... back... to the 80's! But those memories are a bit clearer, and the straight up Kasey Kasem 80's pop music of "Shot At The Night" isn't doing it for me. The 80's New Wave Revival I am down with. The 80's dance funk pop of Neon Indian I am down with. I was even down with the wry 80's hair metal revival that was The Darkness. But that sort of hardcore Top 40 POP, I have to draw the line at. I lived and forgot that stuff already, time travel be damned.
I'm 34...sounds like a few years younger than you, but I know what you mean about "Touch." I think sometimes when we get nostalgic, we're really just wishing we lived back in a simpler time. And the 70s music you describe had that simplet, "good times" vibe. I agree with your points on "Shot At The Night," despite the fact I'm a fan of both bands.