The Top 30 Albums of 2008: # 1

Cut Copy
In Ghost Colours

Hardly anything about In Ghost Colours screams “Album of the Year,” at least not immediately.  At its heart, Cut Copy’s second album is a 50 minute dance party, overtly steeped in the tradition of New Order.  Upon further inspection, In Ghost Colours spans three decades of tradition, connecting the dots between 80’s synth music, the 90’s electronica boom, and the DFA-consumed new millennium.  It proposes that fun and intelligence need not be mutually exclusive, and—while nowhere near the first artists to make that proposal—stands out in a year when most of our great albums reflected the sullenness and uncertainty of the times.  2008 was a year for global-mindedness and acute political thinking in music, and Portishead, Santogold, Tricky, The Bug, Erykah Badu, DJ /rupture, Wale, Mark Stewart, Vampire Weekend, Drive-By Truckers, Boris, and plenty of other artists that didn’t make our list of favorites released masterful albums embodying those ideals.  But 2008 will also be remembered as the year that, despite its use as a tagline or catchphrase, hope became a true political act.  Cut Copy’s In Ghost Colours reminds us that nothing is more politically effective than joy, and no other album moved us, inspired us, motivated our subway head-nodding, lifted our spirits, empathized with our travails, reminded us to keep pushing forward, and made us shake our asses as much as it did this year.

In 2004, when Cut Copy released its debut album, Bright Like Neon Love, pop-leaning dance music didn’t have nearly as much critical cache as it has at present, so it mostly slid under the radar.  Over the next couple of years, however, it amassed a good number of fans.  As the anticipation built for the follow-up, plenty of pop-leaning dance bands sprung up in the interim.  Justice, Simian Mobile Disco, and Klaxons all filled that particular niche, especially among indie rock audiences.  When fellow Australians The Avalanches released their first single in years, “Ray of Zdarlight,” last year it sounded like a cut-and-paste version of a Cut Copy song, sung by George Michael.  Yet, Bright Like Neon Love only hints at the range and skill Cut Copy show on In Ghost Colours—comparatively, it’s a little wisp of an album.  Their earlier singles—“Saturdays,” which tricked out Stardust’s “Music Sounds Better With You” with a “Hanging On the Telephone” type storyline (it’s as if someone tapped into my brain and discovered what I thought the component parts of the best song ever would be); and “Going Nowhere,” a Interpol guitar-driven club tune—were well-made but skeletal songs, hot on catchiness, cold on depth of purpose.  On In Ghost Colours, those ideas get fleshed out into visceral bodies of sound.

“So Haunted,” for example, begins with a similar guitar lick as “Going Nowhere”—a simple, two-chord punk riff just rhythmic enough to be dance-friendly.  From there, however, the song subverts expectation at every turn.  Vocalist Dan Whitford speak-sings in a baritone reminiscent of The National’s Matt Berninger, repeating words with blunt articulation.  On the chorus he bumps his voice up an octave and softens it as he sings, “I get so haunted I fall in your dreams tonight.”  Later, the song completely shifts into a “Blue Monday” homage—the guitars fully drop out, there’s a brief segue, and then the synthesizers kick in, full force.  It’s a classic club trick—pull a musical bait-and-switch, and then drive the people on the dance floor to maximum exertion—but Cut Copy do it in both a pop context and a rock context.  Every song on In Ghost Colours trades in similar genre-busting tendencies, as if Cut Copy set out to pack everything they do well into every song, and somehow manage to succeed.  “Hearts On Fire” would be a brilliant song if it were played on an acoustic guitar, but call-and-response samples (from the same playbook as the ones on Rob Base & DJ EZ-Rock’s “It Takes Two) and a Miami Vice sax solo put it over the top.

Cut Copy have always been interested in dreams—falling into them, running around in them, choosing them over reality.  Maybe that’s why In Ghost Colours has such an ephemeral quality about it—of all the album’s pleasures, few of them are strictly intellectual.  Rather than aiming for the mind, as many of our other 2008 favorites did, Cut Copy muster up all of their talent and ambition in order communicate directly with our bodies and our emotional centers (where are those, again?)  In the end, In Ghost Colours ended up touching us in ways no other album did this year—ways more easily communicated with a smile at the end of an exhausting day, or with a happy little dance in our seat on a crowded subway, than with a diatribe that counts their influences.  2008 gave us plenty of reasons to love and appreciate music.  In 2009, we’re going to need more like this one.

-Martin Brown, 2008

Comments

[Kenny]

This falls squarely into the "album I've never heard of from a group I've never heard of" catagory, but I downloaded it last night. I have a hunch I'm going to love it. I just have to stop listening to all the other music I downloaded because of this list first!

[David]

Thanks for writing these entires, guys!

This is easily the most interesting "best of" series I've read this year -- just start to end great WRITING. Good job.

Plus, it's given me lots of new stuff to check out (your number #1 choice, for example!), and has made me re-evaluate a couple of other albums as well. Like that new Tricky joint: I think I talked myself out of really rating it after the initial excitement had died out, but... it's really fucking good, isn't it?

[David]

"entires" --?

Entries, rather. Brain no werk gud. But seriously -- that cover of 'Slow' on the Tricky album!

I've got to get me this Cut Copy album and fast!

[Sean Witzke]

Yeah, been playing it for the past couple days - I can completely see why this is #1.

[Chris Jones]

Hey. Hey. Hey.

Where's "Superabundance" by Young Knives?