In Ghost Colours

When a stripper is slowly revealing her body to a lonely businessman at Spearmint Rhino, something is usually happening inside the tailored pants of this lucky man. Surprisingly, the chemical reaction is quite similar for a good album. The longer the anticipation, the faster the guy will blow his load. Cut/Copy's sophomore release In Ghost Colours is testament to that, coz its been 4 fucking years of foreplay and personally i was about to explode.

So when the album finally landed on the fat platform of Number 1 in the Australian ARIA albums chart on March 30th; the sultry voice of Dame Shirley Bassey echoed in my ears, "that it's all just a little bit of history repeating."

Because Hey! It had worked before! Oasis... you know, that arrogant Britpop band full of wankers that still think they own the world... Well they released their debut album Definitely Maybe in 1994 after cock-teasing the Brits with three singles, including the anthemic Live Forever - so when their album finally dropped they were already the biggest band in the country and they had the fastest selling record in U.K history.

Obviously the boys at Modular were watching and taking notes because with Hearts on Fire being released in March '07, they've sure been giving us a lot of time to twiddle our thumbs, and other parts of our body for that matter...November came rollin' and scratchin' along with the harder and dirtier So Haunted single. And we all had another reason to hug our best mate and jump up and down like dickheads at 3am in some shitty nightclub after the release of the feeling gooder than good Lights and Music on March the 1st.

So the sneaky little bastards knew what they were doing all along, and fair fucks to them because when i arrived at the opening acoustic guitar chords of Feel the Love - i was doing just that. The rest is a cosmic dream. While their debut album Bright Like Neon Love was brilliant, it was although the band didn't know whether they were imitating Daft Punk or Air - stuck in that grey area between indie-electro-dance and lounge music.

But after 4 years of solid touring with the likes of The Presets, Sebastian, Kavinsky and the Robot Rockers themselves, Cut/Copy have learned how to make even emos dance if they have to. In Ghost Colours is essentially an electro record with all the perks and dynamics of a great rock album. Slowly building bridges that lead into crescendo choruses are plentiful and as catchy as malaria in Indonesia. The Cutters have definitely mastered the technique of the 'woo ohhs and ah ahhhs' as their staple backing vocals but it is with Dan Whitford's new-wave voice that the pop songs really come together.

Sounding like the lovechild of Depeche Mode and Roxy Music, Tom's voice is given more clarity and prominence on this album, a welcome change considering the obvious growth in their lyrical depth. Yes lyrics! not usually the strongest asset of electronic music (just shake what your momma gave you and flaunt it...) but this is where Cut/Copy show us what all the hype is about. The group's ability to strike a balance between intellectual wordplay and sing-along choruses make this an album that is brilliant from the first time you hear it but also has considerable longevity. I challenge anyone not to sing along to the infectious last minute and a half of Out There On The Ice and the chorus of Far Away - both destined to be crowd/radio/club favourites.

In Ghost Colours wears its heart on its sleeve (no pun made about fire, despite temptation) but this only adds to the album's overall pop beauty - a shameless attraction to its own dreamy and punchy hooks. The album is one big hunk of synthed up love and just might be one of the best electronic releases since Röyksopp's The Understanding.

A message to The Presets: the bar has been set.
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