Kindred Spirits Unite
The Age
Friday March 28, 2008
As Melbourne's Cut Copy have grown in the four years since their debut album, so too have their label Modular Records and the machinations of the record industry.
Releasing their second album on Modular, now one of the most successful labels in the country, has been a much more considered affair than when the indie-dance hopefuls quietly slipped out their homemade sleeper hit, Bright Like Neon Love, in 2004.This was before Modular's success with the likes of Wolfmother, the Klaxons and the Presets. Not so much was expected back then from Cut Copy, who became a three piece after main man Dan Whitford recorded the 2001 debut EP, I Thought of Numbers, on his computer.Cut Copy toured extensively with Bright Like Neon Love, both locally and overseas, supporting acts such as Franz Ferdinand, Mylo and Daft Punk, and garnering a fervent live following. They also released a mix CD with the Fabric series, made regular DJing appearances and set up their vanity label, Cutters. The band's second album was co-produced in New York with DFA Records co-founder Tim Goldsworthy. They then had to wait eight months for its release."Modular are affiliated with major labels now," says Whitford, down the line from the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas, "and there's more pressure on the artist to have a successful record. So (the label) were keen for us to work with a producer and for the record to be released simultaneously internationally."The band worked on In Ghost Colours for six weeks with Goldsworthy, who, with LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy, runs DFA Records and makes up the DFA remix and production team. "Tim had obviously done some exciting stuff with DFA," explains Whitford of their choice of producer, "and his recent stuff as The Loving Hand was also in a direction that parallelised with us - the psychedelic, kind of electronic sounds and disco stuff that we were listening to when we were writing the record."Cut Copy found a kindred spirit, not just in Goldsworthy's music tastes - he shares Whitford's dubious obsession with Electric Light Orchestra's concept album, Time - but in his love of unusual instruments and gadgets such as the Prophet 5. Whitford says In Ghost Colours is more song-based than their debut, and uses melodies, hooks and classic song structures more efficiently. Singles So Haunted, Lights and Music and Hearts On Fire are more dancefloor-friendly than anything the band has done previously.He cites the album's influences as '90s shoegazer favourites Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine, classic '70s MOR rock - opener Feel the Love recalls band favourites ELO and Fleetwood Mac - Italo disco, ambient specialists Tangerine Dream, second-wave French house and local act the Sleepy Jackson."With this one, we were a lot more seasoned and more confident in what we can do," he says. "We were able to spend a lot more time creating the record we really wanted to make. And, having played live for two years, the recording sounds a lot closer to what we sound like live. I think there's a lot more energy than what came across on the first record." -- ANDREW DREVERCut Copy play at the V Festival on April 5.
© 2008 The Age