Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours Review

In Ghost Colours announces itself, calmly but majestically, with a wash of hazy voices and fluttering keyboards giving way to crystal-clear acoustic strums, languid indie pop vocals, a sturdy dance-rock groove, pulsating electro-disco synths, swirling Caribou-style psychedelics, and an ethereal, vocoded chorus melody. Squeezing all of that into one song -- the effervescent "Feel the Love" -- is an ambitious move: in most hands it would come out sounding like a bewildering mess, or at least a hammy, hyperactive pastiche, but Cut Copy manage to keep it light, breezy, and utterly ebullient. Even more impressive is that they're able to replicate the trick repeatedly across this remarkably assured sophomore album....full text This head is nodding. Toes are dripping. It’s like a sun-drenched robotic Great Dane just shook itself in slow motion, pebble-dashing me with little prisms of joy.

“Oooh-wooo oooh-oooh ooh-oh-woooo wooooh!” go the very Suede-like post-shoegaze vocals, over backing vocoders, before diving headfirst into a Technicolor pool of New Orderly disco drums and Depeche Mode-ish digital-slurping. Occasionally these pigeonhole-dodging antipodeans can be caught splashing all the boring kids with some safe indie-shaped stuff, like the mock-Interpol ‘So Haunted’. However, they have much fun kicking out any new-rave tags with fizzy riffs strewn all over their H&M-sponsored dancefloor. Oh yes yes, these Australians have properly arrived and it’s one hell of a leap forward from their previous post-Daft Punk/pre-rave renaissance debut Bright Like Neon Love....full text The Australian band's new album takes the best elements of the debut, tightens them up, mixes the tracks into each other, and, with a little help from producer Tim Goldsworthy of DFA, culminates in pure pop perfection. Keeping their trademark breezy, dreamy, swirly, '80s-inspired vibe, Cut Copy have packed In Ghost Colours with pop songs of the very best kind -- songs that make you feel, dance and dream....full text