Cut Copy: Aussie quartet conquers new sonic frontiers

There are many conclusions one could hastily draw when a musician begins a phone interview by sharing, in his roughest raspy voice and exotic Aussie twang, that he’s actually…lying in bed.

Will this be one of those interviews, you wonder? Are you about to be exposed to the seedy underbelly of … musicians from Down Under? Alas, Vice Magazine this is not. I quickly understand that Cut Copy guitarist Tim Hoey is letting me in on his bedroom shenanigans to convey fatigue, not to initiate sexual banter of any kind with Canadian journalists.

Since the immense crossover success of In Ghost Colours, Melbourne’s indie pop mavenshave shed blood, sweat and tears to deliver a third album that refreshes their synth-driven spin on dance and rock cuts. For one, this involved recording the album in quarantine, isolating themselves in an old, vacated warehouse on the outskirts of Melbourne, where there were no phones, no internet and, perhaps most dramatically, no parties. The resulting album, Zonoscope, is a concept record in the truest sense of the word, starting with its ominous, eye-popping cover art of a New York skyline swept up by a waterfall.

“We though the image of the late Japanese photomontage artist Tsunehisa Kimura worked well to highlight the contrast between the more organic sounding instruments and percussions on the record, and the more synthetic, mechanical, machine-made sounds,” says the affable, bed-ridden Hoey. “Many people saw in it a kind of Independence Day apocalyptic image, which I get, but we saw it more as the creation of a new world, as opposed to the destruction of an old one.”

All in a day’s work
Besides metaphors of man-made monuments overtaken by natural phenomena, this new world tips the scale for extended intros and outros (the epic 15-minute closer “Sun God” is pure house euphoria), a psychedelic sprinkling of tribal percussions and loopy disco, and even an Atlanta gospel choir thrown in for good measure.

And yet, Cut Copy’s yearning to challenge itself musically and conquer new sonic frontiers is not all that surprising when looking back on its formative years. “One week, we’d set up our show on the floor of a dance club, and the next week we’d play at a very traditional Australian rock venue,” recalls Hoey. “So it was very much about shifting the context of the music in different environments.”

Hoey, who spoke with me after a long rehearsal for the band’s new live show, promises this European and North American tour will take more cues from the realm of theatre and less from your run-of-the-mill rock concert. “We want to reflect the record a bit more and do something completely different looking and sounding for our fans. It’ll be great!” he concludes, enthused, before adding, “if we can pull it off in the next two weeks.”

With that said, I let Hoey get right back to it… with hopefully a few hours window to hit the hay.

Cut Copy
April 5 | Club Soda
1225, St-Laurent
with Holy Ghost!
www.cutcopy.net