Music Review: Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours

After discovering them by chance at Coachella, I was curious to hear Cut Copy’s second album In Ghost Colours. Luckily, my good fortune with the band continues, and it’s easy to understand how they hit the top of the charts in their native Australia with their electronic pop dance songs, a throwback to ‘80s music without seeming to be derivative.
“Feel The Love” is a wonderful opener. Its strumming guitar backed in turns by lilting and vocoder-effected voices and keyboard arpeggios create an infectious tune sure to keep the kids on the dance floor. The last minutes it becomes something completely different as the synthesizers take over. Rather than coming to an end, a bridge is created that blends the music into the following track “Out There On The Ice.” The guitar disappears and the synths pick up the pace. Again the music ends early as the track keeps going for about 30 seconds with noises that feed into “Lights And Music,” as if segueing into the third part of one epic 14-minute song.

“We Fight for Diamonds” is an atmospheric breather, a one-minute instrumental break. The synths pick up the pace as the music segues into “Unforgettable Season.” The guitars get frenetic as the song closes. “Midnight Runner” slows the down the pace from dancing to swaying as the singer repeats the line, “It's a secret I've been keeping from you.”

“So Haunted” begins with a driving, noisy intensity and just when you think it’s going to take it up a notch and go Nine Inch Nails, they become very melodic, bringing to mind late ‘80s Moody Blues. These two musical directions alternate until the three-minute mark changing the beat once again.

“Voices In Quartz” is an interesting mood piece. It sounds like a remote station in space logging the infinite, then contact with “Hearts On Fire,” a thumping bass synth line and a female vocal loop differentiating from the rest of what’s come before. “Far Away,” follows, built upon what sounds like a Tom Tom Club riff that gives way to a fuzzy sounding loop while a space battle breaks out.

“Silver Thoughts” provides a 30-second respite before the easing into the laid-back “Stranger In The Wind.” There was a rare break of silence between tracks before the final three songs that close the album, the instrumental “Visions,” the pulsating rhythm of “Nobody Lost, Nobody Found,” and the concluding ethereal send-off of “Eternity One Night Only.”

In Ghost Colours is a very good album that honors the past rather than steals from it haphazardly. Dancing shoes aren’t required when listening to the album, but they should be.

Article Author: El Bicho

This writer is a member of The Masked Movie Snobs, a collective that fights a never-ending battle against bad entertainment.

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