Cut Copy - Zonoscope

Cut Copy’s dazzling sophomore LP, In Ghost Colours, performed an impressive tightrope act—capturing all the euphoria and all the irresistible kinetic energy of new-wave dance rock without any of the kitsch of the ’80s. It is a feat few contemporaries could match, made all the more remarkable by the straight-faced execution. Ironic signifiers and notions of cool aloofness be damned—Cut Copy just wanted to dance.

Zonoscope announces a new, but not drastically different, mission statement. There’s a greater emphasis here on textures, transitions and cohesion. The prevalent sequencing tic of In Ghost Colours—ambient minute-long interludes—is subverted. Frontman Dan Whitford gives these tracks a thicker, more consistent production than the mercurial serotonin rush of their predecessors.

Whitford also wears his influences on his sleeve more apparently than ever before, many of which bring Zonoscope into a campy realm that In Ghost Colours transcended. “Take Me Over” rips its bass riff from Aussie compatriots Men at Work; Whitford adopts a shameless David Byrne vocal affect on “Blink and You’ll Miss a Revolution”; and the looping electronics that conclude 15-minute closer “Sun God” (itself a sequencing oddity, being three legitimately distinct tracks crammed into one) recall LCD Soundsystem passed through the same grating New Order filter that pervades the rest of the album. This last comparison may be the most illuminating. In Ghost Colours gave co-production credit to DFA’s Tim Goldsworthy, who in retrospect seems instrumental in helping Cut Copy develop that album’s more natural synthesis of dance and electro-pop.

Zonoscope, with all its ambition, proceeds from a definitive more-is-more aesthetic, but somehow all this sound doesn’t make the songs any bigger. Just when the pulsing guitar of “Corner of the Sky” seems ready to take off, the band flubs the chorus. Whereas In Ghost Colours’ lead single “Lights and Music” announced its intentions with roiling synths and keyboards that jumped through the roof on every downbeat, Zonoscope opener “Need You Now” spends four and a half minutes building tension—but the payoff leaves you cold.

All this isn’t to say the album fails completely, because it doesn’t. There’s plenty here to like, and tracks like “Pharaohs & Pyramids” make clear that though Cut Copy may not have retained their magic touch, they haven’t lost an ear for hooks. But those hooks—the primary reason why In Ghost Colours made such a splash in the first place—aren’t given the same exuberant prominence as before. Cut Copy have grown up, but their unabashed youthfulness was what we loved about them all along.