The sun has set at the Laneway festival and the rain is threatening. Thankfully the expected downpour fails to materialize and my goal of catching the first live performances of Cut Copy's new album Zonoscope go ahead as scheduled.
The album had leaked early that week, and it was tempting to try and find it, but instead I made myself familiar with the new stuff via their website stream. So it goes when you're that rarest of musical creatures - Australian and critically acclaimed overseas. You have to do these things to try and circumvent the pirates. It wasn't always like this, but after the Cutters last album dropped into a musical landscape that was being reshaped in the image of synth-pop, the genre-defining In Ghost Colours felt like their zeitgeist moment.
Three years later and you would expect that in the face of the genres that have risen in that time (Dubstep, UK Funky) that Cut Copy would be suffering under a redundancy of sound. That is not the case. Never ones to be happy to coast on their accomplishments, Cut Copy have touched on a melange of new sounds on this full length, all the while never losing sight of the dance-floor.
'Need you now' leads off the record, a 'slow build and release' dance track in the tradition of great micro-house and minimal techno records of the last decade. The maturity is in the patience that the boys show; there's no urgency to get the crowd amped from the jump. 'Take me over' bounces along, courtesy of an initially distracting bass line borrowed from Men at Works 'Down Under'. Thankfully the distraction dissipates once the sublime chorus rushes in, and guess what - repeated listens reward.
The restlessness in the album becomes even more apparent in the mid-section. New instruments crop up, vocals float and reverberate, and bouncy bass-driven tracks are followed by beat-less interludes. 'This is all we've got' exemplifies this transition perfectly, rolling along on Dan Whitfords echoing vocal over a sample of some playful children.
Although the basic song structures don't strive for much more than their past guitar-driven work, it's how they're presented that's different here. The Cutters have, presumably with a little help from indie-pop veteran mixer Ben Allan, decided to muck about a bit with the way their music sounds. For the most part it works seamlessly.
If the album lags, it's probably with the most straightforward track 'Alisha', which lacks the punch of earlier tracks and suffers in comparison. However, the band knows all to well that you can't leave the crowd standing still for too long and finishes with 'Corner of the sky' and 'Sun God', both of which find new ways to deviate from their synth-pop paths without forgetting the writhing hoards out in the crowd.
Devastating rains categorized December and January, and it took until the last month of the season for the sun to shine like it should. As if on queue, Cut Copy are back too, sound-tracking what's left of a crazy summer. Just the way it should be.
Download 'Where I'm Going' HERE
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