Cut Copy have always been a band of fans, dedicated students of composition and production whose ideas feel reverential rather than revolutionary. Looking back over the Australian quartet’s lengthy career—their ’80s mish-mashing debut, Bright Like Neon Love, came out thirteen years ago—you can trace the zeitgeist of a decade of what we once called “dance-rock” but now identify as the electrofied, groove-led sound of contemporary indie rock, from Tame Impala to Glass Animals.
After riding the DFA-adjacent wave of ’00s indie disco towards festival-slaying status alongside bands like Soulwax and Metronomy, Cut Copy got bigger and slicker; 2011’s Zonoscope embraced the MOR of ’80s Fleetwood Mac and the after-dark euphoria of Chicago house, while their foray into baggy rave on 2013’s Free Your Mind coincided with a mainstream wave of ’90s dance nostalgia that included Disclosure and Jamie xx. Even the left turn of last year’s January Tape, an instrumental homage to ’80s new age, felt on-trend alongside the recent swell of new age reissues and musical quotations. But Cut Copy have never denied their magpie-eyed approach; they’re all about “reinterpreting the music we like within our own records,” as frontman Dan Whitford previously told Pitchfork.
Last year’s cassette of heady, downtempo instrumentals could have heralded a shift away from their unceasingly upbeat, festival-friendly attitude, but the band’s fifth album, Haiku From Zero, mostly sticks to tried-and-true pop formulas. Despite the tropical breeze blowing through these nine tracks, it’s obviously not all poolside piña coladas for Whitford; he’s no longer the carefree embracer of life and love we encountered on the saucer-eyed peaks of Free Your Mind. Where that album pushed its positive mantras to the brink of silliness (“You gotta reach the sky if you want your life to shine,” and so on), Haiku From Zero hides a nugget of anxiety and sadness under every cheerful melody. Gone are the piano vamps and pulsing kick drums in favour of a febrile, itchy funk inspired by early ’80s new wave (most obviously, Talking Heads circa Remain In Light—a sensible inspiration for anyone looking to bury unsettling lyrics in endless grooves) and the polished synth-pop that emerged in its wake.
The album opens on a wistful note with “Standing in the Middle of the Field,” a title that seems to transport us to the moment right after the closing notes of Free Your Mind, as Whitford realizes that the party’s over and everyone’s gone home. “Oh, oh, oh, watch me slowly fall apart,” he sings over percussion that’s a little bit “I Zimbra” and a little bit Mickey Moonlight. “You gotta give up the things you love to make it better.” On “Stars Last Me a Lifetime,” the chugging chorus revisits ‘80s pop-rock through a smeary chillwave filter, as Whitford loses himself in the memory of a lost love: “Every time the stars reappear, I wonder where you are/Baby, is it right that I can only hold you there?”
Song by song, the album gathers more and more emotion, from personal anxieties on the wiry dance party of “Living Upside Down” to global-scale fears the ‘80s radio-rock nod “No Fixed Destination,” until it spills over on the closing track, “Tied to the Weather.” The bare-bones torch song plays like the emotional crux of the album just as it’s ending. Sounding older, wiser, and possibly still enduring a hideous comedown, Whitford warns us: “Don’t mistake familiar love for loneliness/The things you take for granted, they might fade away/And then you wake, and find your bed is cold and vacant.” It’s poised and graceful, yet deliciously bitter—a refreshing antidote to the slickness of the previous eight songs, even the previous few albums.
Aside from these updated lyrical concerns, the band’s archive-mining M.O. often feels too literal, too easy. On the album’s first single, “Airborne,” the scratchy guitar licks and elastic bassline immediately bring to mind Orange Juice’s “Rip It Up” There’s a futility to this kind of homage, where formal innovations get flattened into superficial signifiers. In 1983, “Rip It Up” broke molds as a fusion of contemporary styles and technology, famously the first UK chart hit to feature the Roland TB-303 before the bass synth became the squelchy linchpin of acid house. Now, this reverential recreation of other band’s ideas has come to define Cut Copy.That’s a shame, because as the closing track of Haiku From Zero shows, when Cut Copy take a step back from the small details, forget about their perfect record collections for a few minutes and actually expose themselves as human beings, they hit on a sound that really rings true.
