Post by Zapp Brannigan on Feb 7, 2011 11:58:28 GMT -5
www.lifessweetbreath.com/reviews/albums/25-zonoscope.html
Cut Copy - Zonoscope
[Modular, 2011]
90%
It’s tough to follow up an album that’s as dangerously catchy as Cut Copy’s 2008 breakthrough, In Ghost Colours. If you go in another direction, you’ll get accused of being unable to handle the spotlight (see: MGMT). If you try to make another album of the same kind of material, but the melodies don’t immediately stick as tight as they did on your previous album, the backlash from the masses will be vicious as people will start wondering aloud whether your previous success was a fluke (see: Wolf Parade). The trick when following up a breakthrough album as successful as In Ghost Colours is coming up with an album that simultaneously pleases fans, displays artistic growth, and hints at future growth that is necessary to for a band to have a long, fruitful career. Cut Copy have somehow managed to find a nice balance between all three on their new album, Zonoscope.
The first track on Zonoscope seduces the listener much more gradually than anything on the Colours. Instead of immediately getting in your face with an impossibly catchy synth riff and exhilaratory hooks, the track starts off with a simple, minimalistic keyboard line that sounds more mechanistic than poppy. Then, the clinky percussion comes in, the synths swell and get louder, and the track ascends higher and higher until it finally explodes into the aforementioned exhilaration of a hook. It’s a track that’s built more around the idea of buildup and payoff than anything found on the less patient albeit equally impressive Colours, an encouraging sign that these Australian lads are musically maturing at a rapid clip.
Another noticeable difference in Cut Copy’s sound this time out is their tendency to veer much more into the “pop” aspect of synthpop than they’ve shown in the past. “Take Me Over,” with its worldly bass and tribal percussion, would not sound the least bit out of place on an expanded edition of Talking Heads’ Little Creatures or even Duran Duran’s Rio. Tracks such as “Pharaohs and Pyramids” and “Blink and You’ll Miss a Revolution” take Cut Copy’s poppy tendencies out of the club and place them right in the middle of a sweltering desert with their provocative desperation, while “Where I’m Going” is nothing if not a straight-up rock song, with the emphasis much stronger on the guitar and the chugging snare drum than the spare synth line in the hook.
By the end of the album, on album closer “Sun God,” the band’s newfound patience is once again on display, as the African rhythms, which are present throughout the album, of the first five minutes of the track, give way to more of the slow-building atmospheric electronic music that introduces the album on “Need You Now.” The track eases slowly towards the door as it eventually fades out gently, sending you on your way on with the band’s discovery of a slow burn freshly at the front of your mind. It’s the perfect note to end the album on after all the wonderfully enjoyable melodies and hooks, one that both boldly announces that Cut Copy is here to stay and hints at a boundless future for the band.
-Kyle A. Rosko, February 6, 2011
Cut Copy - Zonoscope
[Modular, 2011]
90%
It’s tough to follow up an album that’s as dangerously catchy as Cut Copy’s 2008 breakthrough, In Ghost Colours. If you go in another direction, you’ll get accused of being unable to handle the spotlight (see: MGMT). If you try to make another album of the same kind of material, but the melodies don’t immediately stick as tight as they did on your previous album, the backlash from the masses will be vicious as people will start wondering aloud whether your previous success was a fluke (see: Wolf Parade). The trick when following up a breakthrough album as successful as In Ghost Colours is coming up with an album that simultaneously pleases fans, displays artistic growth, and hints at future growth that is necessary to for a band to have a long, fruitful career. Cut Copy have somehow managed to find a nice balance between all three on their new album, Zonoscope.
The first track on Zonoscope seduces the listener much more gradually than anything on the Colours. Instead of immediately getting in your face with an impossibly catchy synth riff and exhilaratory hooks, the track starts off with a simple, minimalistic keyboard line that sounds more mechanistic than poppy. Then, the clinky percussion comes in, the synths swell and get louder, and the track ascends higher and higher until it finally explodes into the aforementioned exhilaration of a hook. It’s a track that’s built more around the idea of buildup and payoff than anything found on the less patient albeit equally impressive Colours, an encouraging sign that these Australian lads are musically maturing at a rapid clip.
Another noticeable difference in Cut Copy’s sound this time out is their tendency to veer much more into the “pop” aspect of synthpop than they’ve shown in the past. “Take Me Over,” with its worldly bass and tribal percussion, would not sound the least bit out of place on an expanded edition of Talking Heads’ Little Creatures or even Duran Duran’s Rio. Tracks such as “Pharaohs and Pyramids” and “Blink and You’ll Miss a Revolution” take Cut Copy’s poppy tendencies out of the club and place them right in the middle of a sweltering desert with their provocative desperation, while “Where I’m Going” is nothing if not a straight-up rock song, with the emphasis much stronger on the guitar and the chugging snare drum than the spare synth line in the hook.
By the end of the album, on album closer “Sun God,” the band’s newfound patience is once again on display, as the African rhythms, which are present throughout the album, of the first five minutes of the track, give way to more of the slow-building atmospheric electronic music that introduces the album on “Need You Now.” The track eases slowly towards the door as it eventually fades out gently, sending you on your way on with the band’s discovery of a slow burn freshly at the front of your mind. It’s the perfect note to end the album on after all the wonderfully enjoyable melodies and hooks, one that both boldly announces that Cut Copy is here to stay and hints at a boundless future for the band.
-Kyle A. Rosko, February 6, 2011