I can remember being at the 2011 incarnation of the Pitchfork Music Festival on Sunday, when the night was steadily drawing to a close. I was standing with friends near the food area as Cut Copy spilled forth from the "Green Stage". While I had already committed to the conversation, I couldn't help but be drawn in by the Australian group. First my foot began to steadily tap as the well-known "Hearts on Fire" washed over the crowd, and soon enough I was rushing towards the stage no longer able to maintain the facade of passing conversation. That's the sway their music possesses when you let it pass by your ears.
New single "We Are Explorers" off of Free Your Mind maintains a similar tractor-beam approach. Stuttering pianos begin the hypnosis, before saccharine background vocals lure you in further; glossing over Ben Browning's muscular bass part. A brief foray into knob-fiddling lends the song its exploratory title, eventually settling on Dan Whitford's wistful vocals. His earnest repetition of "just tell me your fine" disappears in a cloud of the song's skyward hook which is myopically focused on seeing "the morning sun". It's a cry that can only come at the end of the night, when you're stuck holding a glass and cycling through your phone looking for anyone to go home with. Still, when you hear "We Are Explorers" it's hard to pay that any mind. You're more likely to get lost in the laser beam synths and clattering cowbell. Cut Copy claim to be explorers, but here their closer to conquerors.
Free Your Mind, the Australian quartet's fourth LP is out November 1 through Modular.
No comments:
Post a Comment