8.0
Zonoscope, Australian electropop group Cut Copy's third and latest LP, is almost like a solid soundtrack of "Fit As Much '80s As You Can In An Album" album. I say "almost" because I cannot imagine an album fitting so much chaotic, irritating sound into an album. Cut Copy do an excellent job of creating great sounds that are very catchy, but once they are analyzed, they aren't anything special.
Zonoscope has the chaotic values of Animal Collective, yet not as abrasively notched up and fun loving dance-punk of LCD Soundsystem. Cut Copy sounds like they just sit down with a keyboard and fiddle around with different sounds and create something dancey. Now, I'm sure it's a lot more complex than that, but really when you delve deep into the sound of Cut Copy, their instrumentation is purely shallow. Loops and loops of keyboards, synths, electronic drum beats, and the occasional random entrance of another form of instrument.
Cut Copy is really for easy listening and dancing, and believe me, you'll be dancing to some of the tunes on Zonoscope ("Blink and You'll Miss a Revolution", "Need You Now"). Some songs are all shallow electronica though; in fact, the bouncy "Where I'm Going" has a playful Beach Boy-esque three part harmonic rendition that is very enjoyable. The guitar work on "This Is All We've Got" is fantastic until the interruption of spacey samples, but fortunately it immediately finds its way back to the dynamics of guitar and drums.
If you can't already tell, the song titles are very strong indicator of how weak the lyricism is. It's not exactly "thinking man" lyricism. Most of the songs sing of love ("Alisa", "Need You Now"), the most cliched topic in music. The vocalization isn't to hot either, lead singer Dan Whitford hides behind a lot of the walls of sound coming at you a lot like earlier 2011 stars Smith Westerns, but not as bad. Whitford echoes and seems to disappear almost like one of the instruments in the song, which can be done well, but not in this case.
All in all, Zonoscope is a fairly good album with a great moments and poor ones, but mostly great. With shallow instrumenation deep down, but most will not be bothered and will really enjoy its integrity. Zonoscope is really a great place to start if you maybe wanna get into a new and rising genre of electropop.
Sample:
Zonoscope has the chaotic values of Animal Collective, yet not as abrasively notched up and fun loving dance-punk of LCD Soundsystem. Cut Copy sounds like they just sit down with a keyboard and fiddle around with different sounds and create something dancey. Now, I'm sure it's a lot more complex than that, but really when you delve deep into the sound of Cut Copy, their instrumentation is purely shallow. Loops and loops of keyboards, synths, electronic drum beats, and the occasional random entrance of another form of instrument.
Cut Copy is really for easy listening and dancing, and believe me, you'll be dancing to some of the tunes on Zonoscope ("Blink and You'll Miss a Revolution", "Need You Now"). Some songs are all shallow electronica though; in fact, the bouncy "Where I'm Going" has a playful Beach Boy-esque three part harmonic rendition that is very enjoyable. The guitar work on "This Is All We've Got" is fantastic until the interruption of spacey samples, but fortunately it immediately finds its way back to the dynamics of guitar and drums.
If you can't already tell, the song titles are very strong indicator of how weak the lyricism is. It's not exactly "thinking man" lyricism. Most of the songs sing of love ("Alisa", "Need You Now"), the most cliched topic in music. The vocalization isn't to hot either, lead singer Dan Whitford hides behind a lot of the walls of sound coming at you a lot like earlier 2011 stars Smith Westerns, but not as bad. Whitford echoes and seems to disappear almost like one of the instruments in the song, which can be done well, but not in this case.
All in all, Zonoscope is a fairly good album with a great moments and poor ones, but mostly great. With shallow instrumenation deep down, but most will not be bothered and will really enjoy its integrity. Zonoscope is really a great place to start if you maybe wanna get into a new and rising genre of electropop.
Sample:
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