Bright Like Neon Love

Album review

The Australian dance-pop group Cut Copy, fronted by multi-instrumentalist/DJ/graphic designer Dan Whitford, ends their stellar debut album with "A Dream," a mellow come down from a record scattershot with retro-dance and rock ideas fitted together with ebullient grooves. Perhaps it would have been better served as an introduction to what is such a free flowing, unrestrained electronic dance record. Bright Like Neon Love -- and by extension Whitford -- is so enamored with simple ideals of dance music, it feels like a dreamy, unconscious state of hypnotic rhythms designed purely for easy listening. Conversely, in no way does this strong rookie effort ever really test the listener -- rarely does Whitford expand beyond the confines of catchy synth loops and simplistic, manipulated vocals -- but as a perfectionist of the pop music craft, any one of these nine main tracks (there are two interludes; and "That Was Just a Dream" and "Zap Zap" are really just one song) could have appeared on a Kylie or Madonna record as sure-fire hit singles. At times the rock star in Whitford seems to supersede the '80s pop fanatic, most notably the infectious synth-meets-guitars riff on "Going Nowhere," the largely instrumental "The Twilight" and the near alternative rock/post-grunge of "Bright Neon Payphone," yet the album's greatest strength is how Whitford remains on an even keel throughout, almost melting down his favorite rock and dance elements to their most simplistic state to make them more palatable. As jarring as switching from synths to guitars can be, Bright Like Neon Love remains consistently a pop record. The lyrics and vocals also play a major factor in making Cut Copy's sound so easy on the ears, as Whitford tends to not sing with much voracity or even mild interest. On "Saturdays," he barely even mutters the rather inane opening lines "When I'm looking for you/I call your number but I can't get through" before the synth-vocoder backing vocals kick in (a common inclusion throughout the album) and the song transforms from a more effervescent version of Stardust's "Music Sounds Better with You" to an uncontained explosion of fuzzy synths, handclaps, and sampled loops. The only other moment on this record that equals the untethered fun of the aforementioned songs' second half is the thumping transition into "Zap Zap," which serves as the album's major landmark. Propelled by rapidly moving phase changes and synth vocals, it's Whitford's only true "DJ" moment on the record -- as he finds the perfect beat and feels content to bask in it for over a couple of minutes.

© Erik Leijon /TiVo