Music

Cut Copy ducked out of the way, and into the studio, just as the words ‘new’ and ‘rave’ were being awkwardly fused together by glowstick companies with a surplus of stock. They could so easily have been lumped in with Lost Penguin and co simply because they use guitars and synths at, like, the same time, but instead return to find an electro-pop landscape full of bobbins bands whose sole ambition is to stick in our craw. Which they’ve achieved.

What a relief it is, then, to have the Melbourne trio back. Cut Copy’s 2005 debut, ‘Bright Like Neon Love’, was a tenderly euphoric entrance, owing a sizeable debt to New Order and the Gallic disco sounds doing the rounds at the time. Woozier, fresher and more agreeable still is this second effort, shot through with dizzying lasers and a deep, housey electronica (especially so on the soaraway ‘Hearts On Fire’), as well as an eagerness, a little like The Go! Team, to put everything they love into the mix. They do it with punctilious skill, spreading a translucent film of blissed out, Valentines-y guitar for their electro-pop to shimmer gorgeously through. Does it offend us? Not a bit.