M83 can be a difficult band to get into if you're unfamiliar with them. Their career arc has been a strange one and has been frustrating for a number of their fans. The band's early albums are slow, atmospheric electronica that owes a great debt to the likes of Brian Eno and John Cage. At best these first few records are beautiful and entrancing, at worst too noodly and obtuse. Then one of M83's founding members left the band and took that ambient style with him, at least for the most part. The transitional period included two very different albums: 2005's intense, more rock-centered Before The Dawn Heals Us and the instrumental, much more laid-back Digital Shades Vol. 1 in 2007. It wasn't until 2008's Saturdays = Youth that M83 found a wide audience and a pop-friendly sound. This intimidating discography in mind, the band's new double album Hurry Up, We're Dreaming is a great point of entry. It's basically a tour through M83's many different styles and a gorgeous one at that.

The distribution on Hurry Up seems designed more for pacing than chronological fidelity. The serene instrumental pieces most common to the band's early work serve as palate cleansers between more rocky or New Wave-y tracks.  "Another Wave From You" wouldn't be out of place on the Tron: Legacy soundtrack while the likes of "Splendor" apply the concepts found in Dead Cities, Red Seas and Lost Ghosts to more organic instrumentation than the band has ever adopted before.

The biggest change for M83's sound on Hurry Up, We're Dreaming is the intensity of Anthony Gonzalez's vocals. Whereas he was restrained even in the most bombastic tracks from Before The Dawn and Saturdays, on Hurry Up he yelps and calls. It works surprisingly well, breaking away from the cool detachment of previous albums to bring something fresh to the table.

The stand-out tracks on the album are, not surprisingly, single-ready songs like "Midnight City", a sort of evolved take on "Kim and Jessie" that unites M83 with other great experimenters of the modern music scene such as Hooray For Earth and Starfucker. These bouncy, danceable tracks mix well with incredibly beautiful intermission songs like "Soon, My Friend". The whole thing adds up to an experience that's exhilarating, gorgeous and more than a little exhausting.

Hurry Up, We're Dreaming is one of the best albums of the year, though the 54-minute play time and the relentlessness of the immersive sound is definitely a challenge. It plays well as a front-to-back album, but will likely have a longer shelf life in a truncated playlist form. Like a lot of strong, confident albums of 2011, Hurry Up is heavy and complex. It's also proof that M83 love where they've come from and are excited to get where they're going.