So I rented King Kong, The Battle of Algiers, The Pianist and Metropolis from the library this past week, with the idea of watching them all this week. I watched none of them. I wasn’t anticipating having this little free time this summer. I think it’s time to proclaim the Summer 2008 IMDb Top 250 project a failure. A sad, sad day indeed. Although, honestly, tonight I could have watched King Kong, but instead chose to watch the first really fun-to-watch Mets game in a long while. So sue me.
Anyway, In Ghost Colours by Australian electropop outfit Cut Copy is a solid album that failed to wow me. It was a Pitchfork darling a while back – Pitchfork seems to have a soft spot for synth-heavy sweety-pie pop music á la Junior Boys. But where Junior Boys (just two Canadian dudes) and Cut Copy (Three, count ’em, 3 Australian dudes) differ apart from their number is that Cut Copy seems way more focused on the dance floor than Junior Boys, more kinetic than subtle and contemplative, and as a result lots of the tenuous quality of Junior Boys doesn’t come to Cut Copy as easily.
Let me explain. Junior Boys seems a lot more fragile and intimate in their music, and that has a lot of appeal for close listeners, especially when the album that is all about fragility is a breakup album like the great So This is Goodbye. Cut Copy really just powers along and seems almost too efficient for its own good. Add to the mix that the albums is very continuous and mixed very well, and it just seems like one dance-pop track, which is not a bad thing by any means. It just doesn’t feel like a fully-realized album. As a result, I can’t really pick highlights and lowlights, though “Out There On The Ice” jumped out at me a little more than the others.
As far as the music itself, Cut Copy uses lots of synths and a surprising amount of guitars that are mixed to sound like synths. The result makes the music seem very dense and layered, which is really cool, and I feel like it’s the only thing that it really holds over Junior Boys (who you can tell I feel is their closest comparison), which often just have one or two synth tracks with the vocal track. Also, interestingly enough, I could have sworn that they sounded Swedish. Their accents, probably combined with the kind of music they make (seems sort of crystalline to me, which could be compared with icy, I guess) give the distinct Swedish imprint. I mean, just compare the singer to Jens Lekman. Seriously.
And as far as sheer danceability, I imagine with some more bass, this album wouldn’t be all that beatable. It’s an almost continuously flowing work, as I mentioned before, and I’m sure it translates to great live shows. In a way, it kind of reminds me of minimalist techno guy The Field with its unhurried but constant motion.
Okay, I’m cutting this review off here because I realized that probably no one who reads this blog will have heard of any of the people I just talked about. Better review tomorrow, hopefully of a movie this time.
EDIT: I now realize that the title of this post should have been “Libraries, like morals, are for squares.” Oh well.
I Ate My DVD Collection 