Allan’s World of Music

Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours Review
9 May 2008, Allan @ 9:04 pm

Cut Copy has had considerable hype for a few months, a lot from bloggers and then critics to follow to fuel the fire. In Ghost Colours was released on March 22 (I’m always late) and is this Aussie band’s 2nd official release.

I heard about them from the potential show I wanted to see featuring Cut Copy and the Black Kids. I didn’t know who Cut Copy was but the internet sure did and before I got the chance to check out Cut Copy, the show sold out. That show is ironically today and it probably would be a fun show to go to.

Cut Copy are referred to as dance by some, pop by themselves and have electronic moments with some looped samples intertwined. Cut Copy is one of those bands that I wouldn’t immediately “label” or slap on with a genre because they do sound different and are unique.

Okay time to finally get into In Ghost Colours. I don’t like IGC too much as the rest of the internet does and I think I recall myself not liking my first listens after they put the first 6 tracks of IGC up on their myspace. However, they have a lot of enjoyable elements to each and every song sometimes it’s the looping of various samples such as on Feel The Love, or on Far Away the vocals and some upbeat moments make some songs quite enjoyable. A few of the problems sometimes is that some songs have that upbeatedness but it doesn’t quite intertwine well with the rest of the music and some of the songs feel like they are rather similar.

A pet peeve on mine on this album which contains 15 tracks, is that there are 4, count em 4! transition tracks on this album. By transition tracks I mean songs that are only one minute long or sometimes 30 seconds and do not add ANYTHING to the quality of the album. Usually these tracks head to my trashbin but I’ll give some slack to Visions which is a pretty sick track but things like “We Fight For Diamonds”, “Voice in The Quartz” and “Silver Thoughts” kill the momentum and made it a lot more difficult to get into this album then it could’ve been. I don’t think anyone would call foul on having 12 tracks as there is a lot to offer from the album to begin with.

Another thing I just noticed is the similarities between Hearts on Fire and Nobody Lost, Nobody Found…they use roughly the same sample as an intro (at least with the beats) which kind of bothers me in general. Songs on IGC took a little while to develop and ended up better then I thought especially after taking an indepth look…however it’s still a disadvantage. Another thing I must say…there isn’t one track that jumps out at me that has me saying “song of the year” or even this track “stands out”. It’s all a crap shoot which tracks you’ll probably like but the album is solid regardless.

Rating: 4 out of 5
I WAS going to give it a 3.5 out of 5 but after further examination there’s a reason why some are batshit crazy about Cut Copy. Songs aren’t catchy but if you give it time you’ll be rewarded. It’s a very solid album, with quality, quantity and originality. Not the greatest album of the year in my opinion but I tip my hat to anyone that does think that. Some songs just didn’t work for me as a whole which why I hesitate to give it a better score.

Here are my two favorites from the album:

Far Away by Cut Copy

Unforgettable Season by Cut Copy

Buy this album at CDUniverse/Insound/Amazon

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