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The cover for Cut Copy’s early-2011 release, Zonoscope, on Modular Records, is among the year’s most memorable. The piece, called Waterfall, created by the late Japanese artist Tsunehisa Kimura, features a rooftop shot of the Manhatten skyline, and looks down on and across the vastness below. What makes the artwork phenomenal is a flooding stream running over the foremost rooftop and pouring down the side of the building, then out of the shot and presumably submerging the entire busy city below. The photo is only possible because of Kimura’s specific trade, photomontage, in which artists blend images from completely separate shots to form one surprising and otherwise impossible display.
The album that this artwork represents is brilliantly similar. Zonoscope is full of familiar sounds which are not usually paired with one another, and it’s that juxtaposition which makes it inspiring. Dark, Joy Division-esque 80’s tones curl up with sunny, unmistakably Brian Wilson surf rock. Funky disco grooves are marginalized by industrial textures and patterns. Australia’s Cut Copy does all this without fear or failure. They’re not trying to slide circles through rectangles, or triangles through squares, they’re just doing it.
If any one thing acts as the adhesive onto which all these separate pieces cling, it’s lead-singer Dan Whitford’s steady voice. His smooth and versatile baritone has a similar power and slur to Matt Berninger’s work with The National, and a range of playful to mysterious identities which mirrors Ivan Howard’s of The Rosebuds. In fact, in attempting to compare Cut Copy to another band, North Carolina’s Rosebuds might be the best fit.
Just as viewers do with Kimura’s piece, Waterfall, listeners take in Zonoscope as one entity. It’s that whole and single experience that’s important, and, simply put, Cut Copy’s album is masterful. It’s songs are given time to fully develop and bloom, and they drag listeners through multiple contrasting mood swings, finally releasing them at the ends of songs into a mind-blown state of awe. Zonoscope is dynastic, spreading its power over so many genres and territories that it becomes unquestionable.
- Andy Plank (May 15, 2011)
