Zonoscope

Cut Copy’s third album 'Zonoscope' is riding high on an indie wave unsure of where its headed, writes SHAUN PRESCOTT.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] It's no accident that “wave” is a popular affix in pop music. Styles swell and dominate for only a moment before crashing and then withdrawing back into an ocean of sound, mostly unremembered, sometimes taking prisoners. It must be tiring for anyone determined to detect a narrative, or some contemporary reflection, in the sonic arc of a group like Cut Copy. This Melbourne group are vendors of textural luxury: of innocuous, broad stroke pop music. Their music is un-ambitious. They're panel beaters riveting together the choicest cuts from pop history.

And they're not alone. Since 2008's In Ghost Colours – a slinky night time record of spotlit skylines and time-lapsed mirrorballs – there's been a surge of laissez faire pop songwriting, the type that revels in its desire for (and imagining of) an escape, usually back to the ’80s. Cut Copy write the type of pop songs that could have been written at any point in the form's history, and the only trait that betrays its 2011-ness is this attitude – or lack thereof – that appears to be the default setting for “indie” electronic pop at the moment. If there's any widely acknowledged impetus for this desire for an escape, it isn't explained or touched upon here. But where are they escaping to? Any time but now.

There's a song on Zonoscope called 'Strange Nostalgia for the Future', which is probably the most blatant self-diagnosis of “the mood” this wave has yet offered. Because Zonoscope is a lovely album, but it speaks of an intellectual mood stymied by a climate of sensory overload. As chart pop – and pop culture in general - becomes busier and more invasive, Cut Copy and their kin are revisiting the grand emergence of the synthesizer as pop's prime blissful weaponry. The synth is not their means, it's the ultimate end. These textures are loaded with connotations of the future, when we hadn't quite gotten there yet, when the mystery and wonder still remained. The American underground is riddled with material like this, and Australia has the likes of Catcall and Guerre carrying a similar torch. But Cut Copy's lyrical content doesn't acknowledge this alchemy at all, so busy it is with love and longing and escape. Cut Copy's choices as textural craftsmen speak for themselves.

“‘Zonoscope’ is a lovely album, but it speaks of an intellectual mood stymied by a climate of sensory overload.”

These buried sensations prove just as sharp once the dust has lifted. 'Need You Now' is ridden with the kind of blocky, leaping-sprite synth arpeggios that manage to contain every colour in a neon streetscape, all within the space of three seconds. The climax proceeds like an over-exposed montage: unabashedly sentimental and electrifying. Cut Copy always take the sledgehammer approach to move you, and despite their vigour they rarely miss the mark. They miss it when they're forcedly bright and optimistic, as on 'Where I'm Going', an awkward moment rife with the indie hand-clap gaiety that grates any time, but especially during an album otherwise plunged in a blazed reverie.

It's moments like this that undermine the consistency of Zonoscope: the sunnier excursions and the occasional flirtations with guitar ensemble music go to show that their songwriting is pretty rudimentary without the sumptuous electronic sheen. And for all its merits, it's difficult to imagine a record like Zonoscope transcending the time in which it was birthed. This record is as inconsequential as an isolated soap episode, but it makes perfect sense inside its environment, as part of an isolated ongoing concern, and at a time when indie pop music seems wistful and uncertain, afraid to grow up. Even if the wave Cut Copy are riding is as monstrous as the one depicted on the cover of Zonoscope, there's the feeling that inevitably it's going to recede. And, if they're lucky, washed ashore again a few decades from now.

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Cut Copy’s ‘Zonoscope’ is out February 4 through Modular.

Listen to 'Take Me Over':

[Historical embedded media is withheld pending rights review.] Cut Copy - "Take Me Over" (Radio Edit) Premiere by modularpeople