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.