Cut Copy | Photos by Jennifer Gibbs

Cut Copy performed perhaps one of the most memorable shows in
the Ogden’s recent history on Tuesday night. The combination of
pulsating beats, strobe lights, and front man Dan Whitford’s vocals
bewitched their fans into a fit of dance. Along the way converting the
non-believers in the sold out crowd. The violent strobe flashes and the raging pulses of colored spotlights blended seamlessly with euphoric synth pop beats and throbbing bass riffs.

The Australian quartet played a combination of songs from their three
albums, including “Need You Now” and “Hanging On To Every Heartbeat”
from their newest album Zonoscape. The audience was enraptured by the time they played their first hit “Lights and Music”, but by the time they played their biggest hit to date, “Hearts On Fire”, the audience was so consumed with the hypnotizing get-up-and-dance beats that not a still person remained.

The night opened with Washed Out, the stage persona of chillwave
artist Ernest Greene, who delivered an ethereal set of songs from his
debut album, With and Without. Washed Out ended with the indie crowd
fan favorite “Eyes Be Closed”, energizing the anxious crowd distracted with feverish anticipation for the more uptempo headliners.

Cut Copy has such an explosive stage presence that once taken in is
hard to overestimate. Their sets are like a hallucinogenic drug in which all
the problems of the world all seem to fade away once in the basking
glow that is Cut Copy.

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It is a telling statement of our modern times that one might can ask if a band like Cut Copy is a “real” band. Real in the sense that the question of whether they consist of humans playing physical instruments can be a valid at all. I should preface by stating that I wasn’t as familiar with Cut Copy prior to seeing them. Nor did I do my homework before the show for the quick and easy facts. So much so, that it wasn’t until some post-show Googling that I learned of the group’s Australian origin. My game time assumption was Britain. Usually that knee jerk guess would stand as a safe bet, in statistical terms, for any Anglo group with non-North American accents. Even so, my go-to geographical deduction left me wondering. Why was I so quick to conclude them to be British?

Cut Copy’s sound evenly distributes refined new wave homages with a multi-genre referencing texture of electropop rhythms. Dan Whitford’s dramatically articulated vocals are employed for a further hit of nostalgic 80s feel. In view of the fact that those same rhythms and vocals sound like they could be straight ripped from obscure disco records, it would have surprised me none had Cut Copy looked more like an efficient electronica outfit and not the full band they actually are. Color my ignorance of Cut Copy to nothing beyond inoffensive lack of awareness. Turns out they have real drums, guitar(s!), and bass to go with the essential keys and assorted plug-ins. It also turns out they are massively popular as evidenced by the extremely packed and very sold out Bluebird theater.

Compared to last weekend’s Manhattan’s show that our faster on the draw NYC team reviewed on Monday, I did not witness a dominating representation from any specific demographic here in Denver. That remains true only if I do not count the well versed fans enthusiastically singing along during most of the show. Before I digress deeply into a mulling of hair splitting census questions, let me instead indulge on why I think Cut Copy is a successful band for the masses.

Progressive house elements from 1990s techno have consistently proven to be adept tools in the arsenal of working up crowds. The passing of years shouldn’t make this truth anymore obsolete than the passing decades negatively effect loud, crunchy guitars from rousing garage rock aficionados. That is to say, reliability, which by definition is something that has demonstrated its abilities over and over in a consistent way. The prism of musical reference has enough options in 2009 that depending on generational upbringing, classic is as much a relative term as another umm, classic word: Cool. Where a classic band was once defined by the standard guitar/bass/drums, now that template includes everything from turntables, elaborate percussion rigs, live sampling, found instruments, arrays of keyboards and my prior referenced model of knob twirlers and button pushers.

Forceful, up for it performances defined the night for Cut Copy. Their chops are solid and they don’t lallygag with the afforded space between songs. Cut Copy is a breed of band that hangs its hat on the historically schizophrenic conceptions that a band is to provide multiple stimulation points for enhancing the live experience. I don’t hold strong feelings for this type of thing either way, but I do know when complementing touches work when I see them. No song was most indicative of this tenor than on “So Haunted” – which arguably was the peak note of the evening.

It started innocently with an extended intro that bathed the audience in waves of escalating, panicky throbs. Multi-sensory supplement came from flashing lights emanating from a grid of horizontally placed, fluorescent tubes framing the rear of the stage. Flashing in time to the music, the optical mimicry intensified the club vibe to great response. It was a mix begging for a nightclub setting and the amped crowd roared in approval. They danced hard enough to almost will it so, even if it was just the Bluebird.

During one of the more genuinely memorable encore calls in some time, a somewhat coordinated chant of “Cut Copy! Cut Copy!” evolved, to my ear anyway, to sound more like “Big Papi! Big Papi!”. This immediately made me happy. Not because I care for the Red Sox, but because baseball proper is just around the corner. More pics after the jump.

photo by “the ‘Quiet’ American”

It was at least partly a byproduct of personal circumstance, but Cut Copy’s show this weekend felt less like a concert and more like a scene in a movie in which the protagonists take time out to casually attend one. I breezed in, slightly late, to hear In Ghost Colours‘ first (best?) clever/dumb pop moment: “All girls of note are crying/ Boo hoo! Boo hoo,” as if it was cued to my entry. The crowd was already in motion, with Cut Copy’s warm pastel light set-up making everything look like an impossibly kinetic sea of extras, perfectly bouncing in time. It took only seconds to note the obvious demographic reality that the Australian band has a massive gay following. It was the spooning body-builder show of the year. Why is that, you suppose? Just because all of their tracks are triggered to a Pavlovian dance response? I thought dance music, especially of the 80s-informed synth variety, had reached a saturated point of acceptance this decade beyond an “only the gays love to dance” stereotype, but perhaps my polling samples have been a bit limited. Terminal 5 is a big place, after all, and it was very sold out. Nearly everyone in the enormous room was bouncing emphatically, so credit to Cut Copy for prompting so much dedicated energy, at a relatively early point in a New York Saturday night’s life cycle.

For me though, it was pretty impossible to connect emotionally to the music beyond a bit of bopping around. I pretty much love the slick pop album they’ve toured the world on, but Cut Copy almost seemed extraneous to it. You could have kept their light setup and blared the tracks out over a loudspeaker in a dance club and the feel in the hall would have been quite similar. Only on the shoegazier-than-most “So Haunted,” did a bit of rumble and scrape enter the mix. Only then did it really feel spontaneous and alive, rather than immaculately preserved and presented. The corners of their songs are so rounded, and the melodies so streamlined, that room for emphatic changes in tone, of songs gaining steam or stripping down to focus on nuanced melody, is non-existent. Perhaps most crucially, the rhythm section wasn’t forceful enough to provide that, “wow, my body is being pulverized in small degrees” physical thrill that you’d never leave, say, an LCD Soundsystem show missing. I came into a room where Cut Copy was playing (they happening to be there, actually playing), I enjoyed myself for a scene, and then moved forward briskly to the night’s more pertinent plot points.