After multiple listenings of Zonoscope, by Aussie elctro-wavers Cut Copy, I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on what it is I'm listening to. The only lingering question that frustratingly seems unsolvable is just what exactly a zonoscope, if anything, is. Alas any attempts at googling merely yields results for the album, which either spawned the term, or is more interestingly, its namesake. I really want to know. The album cover itself reveals some potential insight. An image of an impossibly beautifully, yet logically realized landscape framed through a circular, perhaps ocular lens; a scope if you will. My fixation on the issue is not random and superficial, not entirely at least. I am compelled to explore the meaning behind a zonoscope because for all of this album's compelling qualities and soothingly catchy hooks, what has me most interested is the way it looks back on and surveys the trends and styles of pop music's past. While this endeavour is not always fully realized or articulated, Cut Copy makes up for this short coming by proving their own stylings capable of filling in the gaps with incredibly catchy and palatable offerings.
Zonoscope is full of, littered even with references and cues to past musical genres. Cut copy is generally referred to as an modern electronic version of your standard new wave variety. Such a descriptor is not entirely accurate, as it covers only part of what they do, at least as far as Zonoscope is concerned. In this album I hear the unfocused creative explosion of the 60s, the dangerous psychedelic experimentation of the drug fuelled 70s, the glossy but superficial efficiency of 80s pop, and the post grunge mix of cynicism and hyper active enthusiasm that occurred when 90s pop and rock were awkwardly thrust together. The fluttering breezy guitar strings that open up “Take me over” don't seem at all synonymous with the constant crisis of alienation and needy desire that characterized so much of new wave. It's far more optimistic, seeming rather analogous to the beach pop trend of the mid 80s that has seen a shockingly prolific and profitable comeback in recent years. With that in mind, it's no surprise that Cut Copy would play around with such a style. Dan Whitford's voice seems atypical for such a conceit, as it seems to constantly be trailed by his own brooding echo. Yet the foreboding weight his voice carries is mostly counteracted and balanced, by his enthusiastic demeanour. “Take me over take me out, in the jungle, forever into paradise”, he sings; it's awfully far removed from anything terribly moody. The hop along percussion and chiming bells in “Where I'm going” coupled with Whitford singing, "all you need is a dream and a lover too", as the choir claps and bouts “YA!” seems decidedly ancient compared to the sophistication of its production. It seems like a spot on approximation of the cheerful flower powered rock that noisily splashed all over the 60s and 70s. The track is even punctuated by a chilled out kaleidoscopic range of key board notes that almost beg to be heard as the LSD makes the colours in your room bleed wondrously together. “Blink and You'll miss a Revolution” is quite a remarkable cocktail; beginning with a muted fuzzy elctro bass that slowly comes into focus, it seems oddly in time with the state of rock and roll after grunge was cynically monetized and striped of its soul in the mid 90s. The beat is then over taken by a bouncing tropical percussion that's startling reminiscent of Cruel Summer by Bananarama. in “Alisa”, the group gazes back to the early 70s when people first discovered the artistic and transformative abilities of pop music; they try and create a facsimile that adequately conveys this sense of wonderment, with fanciful stimulating keyboard clusters, slurry guitars and majestic violin pairings. Its really only the keyboard that brings you back to the 70s but all the instruments seem to share and convey that intangible sense of discovery. By the time you get to “Hanging on to Every Heartbeat”, Cut Copy's escapades through the music of yesteryear are inescapably present and fully realized.
Cut Copy attempts to interpret and utilize even more obscure and bizarre sources of musical inspiration. In several cases they preface or conclude tracks with wide open spacious ambience that nebulously moves from one sound to the other such as the ending of “Sun God” when the melody slowly drips away and all that remains for contemplation is its barely constituted yet pulsating core. “Strange Nostalgia for the Future”, tries to let a melody naturally evolve from nothingness, as an embryonic choir calmly cheers it on. Elsewhere you'll find such an instance in the opening of “Pharaohs and Pyramids”. It's a little zoned out and even reminds me of Boards of Canada. These instances are brief and not fully realized, as it is clearly a little too far beyond Cut Copy's comfort zone. This is a group too entrenched in the need to produce catchy hooks to let their music devolve into something more to amorphous and atypically structured to grasp. As a result the first time they try this, it only lasts for a few seconds, before the song defaults to something much more traditional and structured. High intensity, super charged, climatic key boards and deeply imbedded guitar strings round out an intense beat with Whitford frantically singing to match the harmony exactly. Here he shows his lyrics to be a little more relatable to the 80s new wave that people so keenly relate Cut Copy to, “Don't take my heart away, just save it for another day” It's a great sounding track, but it reveals the primacy Cut Copy places on their own aesthetics, which in turn makes their attempts at surveying and incorporating so many other ways of structuring music and their respective genres not entirely fruitful. Cut Copy seems to understand the composition and structures of the genres they try and replicate, they just aren't quite sure how to incorporate them into their own music and make it function with the messages and ideas they want to communicate. That's why all these obviously noticeable genre markers seem to jump at you as the songs begin, but they disintegrate into the melody before long. As mentioned before, “Hanging on to Every Heartbeat” is really the only song where they truly nail it; the experimental nature of the 70s and is fully realized with dark and mysterious bass guitars lurching through the depths of the song, with sparkling key boards magically stretching out into infinity, while Whitford sings about staring at stars and satellites. Its such a wide open melody that it could entertain the notion of any idea or any type of music, yet it manages to maintain its own retention.
While Cut Copy is not as successful as they could have been with their grand designs had they played things a little less safe, one can't deny the beautiful flow they seem so adept at creating. The way the melody slowly drifts along nurturingly carrying Whitford's voice alongs its euphonious spine in “This is all we've got” is marvellous. The opening track “Need You Now” shows Whitford trying to maintain his composure and dapper charm, yet with each repeated succession of the chorus he slowly looses control of his artifice. It's revealingly genuine and affecting when he finally burst out of his shell, however briefly, when he screams for the final time, “I know we're going crazy, but I need you know... to find somehow!” The song carefully builds up to this point, anxiously stewing with anticipation; it makes it all the more satisfying when it finally happens. “Sun God” starts off as an incredible send off, as the thunderously majestic beat is accompanied by Whitford's ritualistic chants. It's as if he's moved beyond the blase metaphors of love and heart break to something more universal, even though he's singing about mostly the same things. As he transitions into a spoken word portion, the song turns into something straight out of The Rapture's playbook. The way he dominates the beat with his own imperative claims, using a suddenly cocky and swaggering voice to mask his more frail and demure side reminds me exactly of Luke Jenner. Oddly enough, the tracks just described here are the few ones mostly devoid of obvious musical genres that are referenced throughout most of Zonoscope, and they seem to me to be the best of the bunch.
Cut Copy should be commended for attempting what they did in Zonoscope. They boldly tired to make a collage of music spanning across time and genres incased in a single album. The problem is this collage is largely incomplete, offering only brief and half realized samplings of the vast spectrum of music outside their own specified confines. This really isn't an issue though as Cut Copy proves amply that they don't need some broad array of genres to act as some dictating muse to them. They are more than capable of crafting their own expansive, emotional, and catchy as hell sound, one that bands in future would be wise to reference. Even if that never happens, Zonoscope will remain an exceptional and explorative look back on the adventurism of looking forward.
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