Thank You!

Soundscapes will be closing permanently on September 30th, 2021.

Open every day between Spetember 22nd-30th

We'd like to thank all of our loyal customers over the years, you have made it all worthwhile! The last 20 years have seen a golden age in access to the world's recorded music history both in physical media and online. We were happy to be a part of sharing our knowledge of some of that great music with you. We hope you enjoyed most of what we sold & recommended to you over the years and hope you will continue to seek out the music that matters.

In the meantime we'll be selling our remaining inventory, including thousands of play copies, many of which are rare and/or out-of-print, never to be seen again. Over the next few weeks the discounts will increase and the price of play copies will decrease. Here are the details:

New CDs, LPs, DVDs, Blu-ray, Books 60% off 15% off

Rare & out-of-print new CDs 60% off 50% off

Rare/Premium/Out-of-print play copies $4.99 $14.99

Other play copies $2.99 $8.99

Magazine back issues $1 $2/each or 10 for $5 $15

Adjusted Hours & Ticket Refunds

We will be resuming our closing sale beginning Friday, June 11. Our hours will be as follows:

Wednesday-Saturday 12pm-7pm
Sunday 11am-6pm

Open every day between September 22nd-30th

We will no longer be providing ticket refunds for tickets purchased from the shop, however, you will be able to obtain refunds directly from the promoters of the shows. Please refer to the top of your ticket to determine the promoter. Here is the contact info for the promoters:

Collective Concerts/Horseshoe Tavern Presents/Lee's Palace Presents: shows@collectiveconcerts.com
Embrace Presents: info@embracepresents.com
MRG Concerts: ticketing@themrggroup.com
Live Nation: infotoronto@livenation.com
Venus Fest: venusfesttoronto@gmail.com

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Thank you for your understanding.

Twitter
Other Music
Last Month's Top Sellers

1. TAME IMPALA - The Slow Rush
2. SARAH HARMER - Are We Gone
3. YOLA - Walk Through Fire
4. DESTROYER - Have We Met
5. DRIVE BY TRUCKERS - Unravelling

Click here for full list.

Search
« JAMES BLAKE - S/T | Main | WIRE - Red Barked Tree »
Sunday
Feb132011

CUT COPY - Zonoscope

You know what's old news? The '80s are back. Heck, given what young bands like Smith Westerns are doing (along with numerous reunions from Polvo and Pavement to Archers Of Loaf), it's kind of even old news to say that the '90s are back. But while the '80s' once-ghettoized electronic drums and arpeggiated synths have become so completely reabsorbed into our musical culture as to feel permanently redeemed, not all touchstones of the Reagan era have been so evenly reinstated. Singer Dan Whitford of Melbourne, Australia natives Cut Copy is an embodiment of one of those touchstones: the impassioned white-guy yelp.

I’m talking Andy McCluskey of OMD on "If You Leave" styles—the cry of the hopelessly romantic Caucasian male, so completely devoid of grit, dirt or guts that it practically cleans your bathroom mirror as it sings. For the most part, the '80s revivalists of the aughts preferred to stay to the more deadpan, wailing or sneering sides of vocalization. After all, as long as this was the case, those with colder feet could still make a case for irony or punk iconoclasm.

Not Whitford. This guy’s purely populist pop pleas echo without a trace of a wink—he means it like Bono or Chris Martin mean it, except over music that neither of those artists are especially good at making (anyone remember Pop?). Fortunately for Whitford, he and his bandmates are very, very good at making that type of music. Which brings us to their third album, Zonoscope. Even though this record closes with a shimmering 15-minute throwdown ("Sun God") and features an instrumental interlude of twinkling beauty ("Strange Nostalgia For The Future"), most of it rides on the back of Whitford’s performance.

While highly danceable, his presence and vibrant emoting is never anywhere but front and centre. In other words, no matter what the songs are doing, if you don’t buy him, there’s no getting around it.
As such, I feel albums like this represents a key point in our culture revisiting the '80s. It’s clearly no longer about picking and choosing the coolest parts of the time period anymore. Zonoscope hones in on the most flagrant aspects of that decade’s dance-pop and revels in them with total abandon. Its production style and overall oomph may be a bit more modern, but its spirit is entirely borrowed. And what’s more, it’s a spirit that, for the most part, led to a following movement in music that was based on guitars, sloppiness and sarcasm (please see: grunge/4-track indie)—a wholesale renouncing of all of the traits that make Zonoscope such a buoyant and optimistic listen. So the question is: now that we’re back here, are we here to stay? Can the Cut Copys of the world co-exist with the next Sebadohs and Mudhoneys in our collections?

Only time is going to tell how cool it’ll be to sound like these guys in 2018, but for now, can I just say, "Yes!!"? Because all over this album—the opening one-two punch of "Need You Now" and "Take Me Over", the perfect final ascension of "Pharaohs & Pyramids", the almost indie-rock bliss of "Alisa"—are moments whose instant enjoyability belie the skill it takes to craft them. This is a great record, and in the same way that listening to OMD’s "So In Love" or Pet Shop Boys’ "Heart" should now leave you a little agog, these Aussies are making pop music that sounds terrific today, and, hopefully, classic in the future. 

Reader Comments

There are no comments for this journal entry. To create a new comment, use the form below.

PostPost a New Comment

Enter your information below to add a new comment.

My response is on my own website »
Author Email (optional):
Author URL (optional):
Post:
 
All HTML will be escaped. Hyperlinks will be created for URLs automatically.