Madeon’s ‘Victory’ scores a Pitchfork 68: the French producer’s first album in seven years is a warp-speed electroclash journey that swaps warmth for spectacle
Madeon’s Victory earns a 68 from Pitchfork, where critic Walden Green frames it as the French producer’s first new album in seven years, positioning him as “an eager star on a warp-speed journey through big-tent synth pop.” Released June 26 via Mom+Pop, Victory is Hugo Leclercq’s third studio album and his most confrontational creative pivot to date: a record that trades the warmth and interiority of 2019’s Good Faith for electroclash poses, distorted guitars, hyperactive synths, and the kind of pop-star ambition that wants runway-level drama rather than headphone intimacy.
The seven-year gap between Good Faith and Victory is the context that shapes how the album lands. Good Faith was a meditation, a record built around the concept of emotional safety and the sonic palette to match it. Victory is its structural opposite. Pitchfork frames the Mom+Pop release as Madeon reprogramming his old sample-pad logic for a world of electroclash poses, distorted guitars, hyperactive synths, and pop-star ambition.
The record opens with “Hi!,” which establishes the mission statement immediately: loud, exciting, compressed hard, hooks delivered at speed. Whether those hooks consistently land is where the album’s internal debate begins and where listener responses have split most visibly.
What Victory Sounds Like Track by Track
The album’s collaborative credits extend across Orlando Higginbottom, Sam Gellaitry, and Erick Elliott, and the breadth of those partnerships maps onto the breadth of the sound. “Red Jacket,” featuring Sam Gellaitry, is the consensus standout among critical and listener responses, combining a growling bass with Gellaitry’s vocal bliss in a way that delivers the record’s maximalist promise without flattening the dynamic range. “Car Crash Baby” is the album’s most propulsive moment. “Dancing on Your Grave” has the album’s most memorable melodic moment alongside what many consider Madeon’s best vocal performance on the record.
On the album’s final track, “Lonely Space Age,” Madeon unpacks a lie that has been haunting him. In this confessional ode, he sings, “I’m an actor in the movie of my life / Is she gonna know to read between the lines.” He does not want to play this part anymore, having to always turn everything, his clothes, his romance, his music, into a spectacle. That closing track is the most important one on the album precisely because it names the tension that Victory has been circling from its opening seconds: the performance of excitement versus the authentic feeling underneath it.
The weaker spots are where the compression and the hook delivery work against each other. “Chaos Magic” loses the rough textured bass of its verse sections when the chorus arrives. “Enjoy” is the most divisive track on the record, pairing beach percussion with high-pitched vocals in a combination that does not fully cohere. “Fire Away” builds a verse toward a chorus that does not deliver the release the arrangement promises.
The Bigger Question: What Victory Is Actually Trying to Do
Madeon felt that this new hyper-punk sound was “forbidden” to him before Victory. Whereas Good Faith and Adventure are vehicles for exploring the vast world around us, Victory is one with the intent to discover the self. That framing is the most useful critical lens for the album. Victory is not a continuation. It is a rupture: Leclercq deliberately moving away from the sound that built his critical reputation to interrogate what it costs to perform creative identity rather than simply live inside it.
Album of the Year aggregates the record at a user score of 75 across nearly 900 ratings, which suggests an audience that has found real value in the pivot even when individual tracks divide them. For listeners who came to Madeon through the warmth of Adventure and Good Faith, Victory is a record that asks something different. It is louder, harder, and considerably more outward-facing. Whether that trade is worth it depends entirely on what you came for. On the evidence of “Red Jacket,” “Car Crash Baby,” and “Lonely Space Age,” the best of Victory suggests the answer is yes.
