Expectations were high for Junk, M83’s first studio album following their Grammy-nominated Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming. Junk’s cover art is telling of the album’s sonic contents: tacky WordArt, Microsoft Paint, and oddball Happy Meal toys unite in outer space to create a collage of ’80s pre-adolescence and underlying cynicism. Despite being inspired by cheesy television shows like Punky Brewster and Who’s the Boss?, Junk is less optimistic than the ambitious Hurry Up. The dizzying combination of rippling anger and desperate nostalgia muddies the elegance of M83’s sound, but if Anthony Gonzalez wants this incongruity to force the listener into critical reflection, he succeeds.

M83 establishes a state of unapologetic disarray within the first few bars of the album’s opening song, “Do It, Try It.” Its jaunty ragtime piano starkly contrasts with heavily synthesized vocals. From this track forward, the 55-minute album embodies organized chaos, a hypnotic amalgam of smooth saxophone, glittering percussions, and mystical vocals. “Go!,” a galactic fist-pump anthem featuring French singer Mai Lan, draws strong similarities to M83’s hit “Midnight City.” “Sunday Night 1987,” gorgeous in its intense melancholia, is perhaps the strongest song on the album, but an exhilarating guitar solo in “Walkaway Blues” and lush vocals in “Atlantique Sud” also stand as testaments to Gonzalez’s talents as a musician and producer.

Standalone magnificence aside, Junk might confuse and even frustrate some listeners with its dogged dedication to reviving ’80s synth-pop. The aggressively dorky “Moon Crystal” feels trapped at a disco roller-rink in 1986, and Lan’s robotic countdown in “Go!” blurs the line between emulation and parody. The effusive ballad “For the Kids” features stunning vocals from Susanne Sundfør, but it echoes Fleetwood Mac to the point of rote replication, with the exception of a bizarre voiceover from a young child waxing macabre poetic. M83 thrusts listeners into the heartland of unflinching nostalgia, but Junk is as much a critique of modern art as it is an ode to 80s electro-pop. Discontent with modern music and culture gives Gonzalez’s schmaltz an ironic edge. It’s not clear, however, whether this newly acquired dissonance breathes refreshing realism into his epic music or wilts his cinematic masterpieces.

Junk’s complete disregard for subtlety makes it harder to listen to in one sitting than Gonzalez’s previous works, but taken in short spurts, it’s entirely entrancing. Shades of jaded cynicism now populate Gonzalez’s kaleidoscopic sound, yet his sincerity is still preserved. Pleading “Take over my dream/ Walk into a feeling” on “Do It, Try It,” Gonzalez maintains the belief that music can change the world. His latest attempt at affecting this change succeeds in making a splash, but possibly at a cost of easy listening