Music: Cut Copy

Published on Friday 20 June 2008 19:59

CUT COPY'S TOURING SCHEDULE between now and September looks overwhelming, taking in venues and festivals from Glasgow to Glastonbury, Brisbane to Belfast, and Chicago to Copenhagen. Tim Hoey, the group's bassist and second guitarist, tells me they're actually booked to tour around the world pretty much solidly for the next 12 months. It would be nice to think, after all this hard work, that people in the northern hemisphere might have heard of them when the dust has settled.

Cut Copy aren't a new band, but they remain criminally unheralded outside of their own country, Australia. Their 2004 debut album, Bright Like Neon Love, was an amalgam of 1980s guitar pop and more sophisticated house music structures that was at once elegiac, cheerful and all but club-ready. The thrilling live shows would descend into 15-minute techno encores – a stunning support slot to Mylo at the Barrowlands won them many Scots fans – and prime New Order was the most common reference point.

Cut Copy are suddenly big news down under. While Bright Like Neon Love didn't chart on its release in Australia, their just-released follow-up, In Ghost Colours, debuted at the top of the national charts. "It was a struggle here for us early on," says Hoey. "There wasn't an audience for our music, radio wasn't really picking it up, but the strength of our live show and the reviews that flooded back to Australia from overseas got us noticed." Ironically, it is overseas where most work still needs to be done – despite the good reviews, In Ghost Colours has so far failed to make the same jump here as it did in Australia.

Early on in their life, the driving force behind Cut Copy was Dan Whitford, the lead singer/guitarist/keyboard player, who formed the band as a solo project in the late 1990s. Whitford did, and still does, own a successful graphic design business, which produces all of Cut Copy's sleeve artwork.

But it wasn't until Whitford met Hoey and drummer Mitchell Scott (and sometime fourth member Bennett Foddy, who left in 2004 to study for a PhD) that the band became a proper going concern.

"I'd moved down from New South Wales (to Melbourne] to go to art school, and Mitch had come down separately for university," Hoey explains. "We all met each other after Dan had started writing Bright Like Neon Love, although he couldn't actually play any live instruments, and he thought it would be interesting to get me doing some live guitars over his own studio samples. That contrast was interesting right away, to add a bit of rawness to the live set." Hoey eventually helped teach Whitford to play the guitar. Scott taught himself drums in order to contribute to the band and the debut album, which was released on Modular, the fashionable Sydney indie label that discovered the Avalanches.

"We signed to Modular early on," recalls Hoey, "when it was a backyard operation with four or five people in a small office. Now it's like a global brand. That's because they were so forward-thinking – they signed bands like us, the Avalanches and the Presets when no-one was interested in what we were doing, and waited for the country to catch up."

The different sound of In Ghost Colours, Hoey says, is a sign of the band's confidence. "Our playing abilities increased while we were touring that first record," says Hoey, "and we matured as well. Plus, we had plenty of time in the studio with Tim (Goldsworthy, of New York producers DFA], a solid six weeks of recording, rather than two days on the first album. These things all made a difference to the final sound.

"We have such a love of pop that it's always going to inform what we do, but we also opened that up on this record, we expanded away from the synthesised 1980s thing. We listened to ELO, and lots of Krautrock, and tied ideas from them together in a different textural way to the first record. It's still a dance record, though, not that it's as full-on as most dance music has become in the last few years. I like the thought that we appeal to both camps, that certain songs of ours work in clubs, but that people can listen to our lyrics in their bedroom as well."

In Ghost Colours feels like an addition to Bright Like Neon Love, rather than an expansion, in that pristine way that truly great bands raise the bar high to start with and expand outward from there. The beats are not so pronounced, but Whitford's melodies are more gorgeous and soothing than has been previously heard. This is good, though – the young club kids can't go on for ever, and it's reassuring to think that Cut Copy have a wealth of songwriting potential stored in reserve.

"I fell ill at the start of this tour," says Hoey, "and Dan is just recovering from a bout of tonsillitis, which is why we had to cancel a few Australian dates. He's OK now though, which is good, because the touring schedule's about to become relentless. I feel like I've aged so much over the last four years that I've learned to take it easy as much as possible."

Which translates as: "We try and leave the partying to the end of the tour, although sometimes we slip up a bit." Hopefully the UK will be partying with this unaffected and excellent group very soon.

• Cut Copy play Optimo at the Sub Club, Glasgow, on 29 June. The album In Ghost Colours is out now.

What other people are saying …

"There will be bigger, more relentlessly hyped records this year, but In Ghost Colours is the gift that keeps on giving."

– Guardian

"The Avalanches-meets-Flaming Lips one moment, or Visage-meets-the Human League the next. A thing of crystalline beauty."

– Simon Price, Independent on Sunday

"Pop lovers will find lots to love here, and if there's any justice, this record will keep them swooning through the summer."

– Pitchfork