Cut Copy Makes Us See In Colour

Autobahn Music Box

I always have a plan when I’m seeing a concert because I know good concerts are not born; they are made. A group of dependable concert buddies, a tight venue and thick crowd, a couple of beers beforehand, and the energy and willingness to dance are essentials. A good performance by the band also helps.

So I spent the hours leading up to the much anticipated Cut Copy performance Tuesday night at Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro trying to coordinate (read: scheme) the social and logistical ingredients just so, as well as knock down my expectations a few pegs, all in the name of eluding that dreaded fog of disappointment that can creep up on the performance of even your favorite band (especially your favorite band) and hover over it for the rest of your life.

As it turns out I needn’t have worried.

Despite some initial disorganization (forgotten ticket, etc.) and a missed opening act (Matt & Kim, whom I’d seen a few months prior at the Cradle thanks to WKNC—please someone tell me they were as adorable last night as they were then), everything fell into place effortlessly. It turns out some concerts are born, because no amount of unfortunate circumstance could have touched Cut Copy last night.

Five minutes after we arrived, the room grew dim, a cheer swelled up from the crowd, and the lights exploded with neon brilliance—as did Cut Copy, who instantly erupted into “Hearts on Fire,” perhaps their best and most elaborate track from 2008’s sublime In Ghost Colours. (Pitchfork ranked it #7 in its top 100 tracks of 2008.) The song is what I would have expected to hear in an encore, if there had been one. (There wasn’t, and in my opinion there didn’t need to be.) The synth, the hyper tight dance beat, and the breathy, repeated “Ooh whoa-oh” in the background say loud and simply, “We’re Cut Copy, and we play what we like.”

Like the rest of In Ghost Colours, “Hearts on Fire” resists meaning and category. It derails your assumptions about high and low art and answers your doubtful “Is it okay that I’m totally grooving to this?” with a resounding “Yes!”

In the postmodern age, there is no longer any such thing as a guilty pleasure.

My ragtag group of concert goers came from all walks of listening experience. Most of us were at least mildly familiar with Cut Copy’s latest album, but one of our group had never heard a single song. Regardless, every last one of us danced like maniacs from the opening beat until the last hurrah. Cut Copy refused to screw around with B-sides and been-working-ons (maybe they reserve those for more seasoned crowds), instead giving us what we really wanted and playing the songs even a casual myspacer would recognize—“Far Away,” “Lights and Music,” “Out There on the Ice.” Cut Copy is the kind of band who seems to understand what it’s like to want to hear the hits. Those songs are hits for a reason, and there’s no room for snobbery in the age of neo-disco.

To me it was fitting that Cut Copy ended when they ended. The convention of the encore—while charming, if somewhat contrived—seems to imply that the band withholds something throughout the show, only to unleash its best and strongest at the very end. Cut Copy is, in essence, incapable of holding back. Even during some technical difficulties they gave us guitar strokes and dreamy electronic noises to lift our hearts up off the ground.

Like this month’s intimate Rosebuds gathering, it’s best, I think, for a show to end too soon. I don’t want satisfaction from a concert; I don’t want to go home fulfilled. Isn’t the point of music to graze and tease that indescribable internal longing?

Give me more of that thirst, Cut Copy!

Photos by Sheethal Reddy.

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Black Kids disco Cut Copy Cat's Cradle

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