Cut Copy – Blink and You’ll Miss a Revolution
It’s Australian dance music Friday!
[Video][Website]
[4.71]
Katherine St Asaph: And also the song.
[4]
Jonathan Bogart: ’80s cod-tribalisms in the music and Planet of the Apes in the video? Really, dudes?
[4]
Alfred Soto: The cartoonish, all-vowels-all-the-time vocals are only part of the problem. Where once they could manage a couple of decent ’80s pastiches now they’re concentrating on actual songs. Singing too. None of which they’re good at.
[4]
Jonathan Bradley: Cut Copy’s mellifluous 2008 album In Ghost Colours wasn’t exactly packed with great songs, but it was loaded with a string of memorable moments that, taken in total, gave the record the shifting, triumphant feel of a good DJ set. “Blink and You’ll Miss a Revolution” exemplifies the problem with the follow-up, Zonoscope: smart set-pieces have been replaced with slick aesthetics. Calling this all pose is not as damning a critique as it could be; the band’s debut, Bright Like Neon Love, achieved much with its dancefloor-Strokes charm. But the closest thing to a hook here is a bridge lost in the midst of “Cruel Summer” sunshine: “Baby, baby, can’t you see/Oh, take it from me” is delivered with the sort of Bananarama that should have been placed front and center. Blink and you’ll miss it, sure, but it’s no one’s idea of a revolution.
[5]
Edward Okulicz: Just the other day I heard this in a very modish Paris clothes store. I liked it enough to immediately get into a buying mood. So I left, and went to a cheaper place and bought two pairs of jeans and a belt, humming the chorus to this all the while. If only it didn’t take so long in slightly-80s-mostly-Yeasayer territory before that glorious chorus, it would be near perfect and I would have splurged at the expensive place on the spot. My wallet thanks what my ears lament.
[7]
Brad Shoup: I can’t deal with all these flat-voiced New Wave boys. Even the call to arms sounds like some thirdhand Midnight Oil-type shit. I’m not certain who’s the butt of this fifth-columnist joke, but it’s probably the guys who think marimbas are inherently dancy.
[4]
Sally O’Rourke: It seems excessively literal to include the word “revolution” in the title of a song that sounds like CNN interstitial music, ca. 1989.
[5]
You’re all wrong. Great cut from one of my favorite albums of 2011. Maybe it doesn’t work as well in isolation but within the context of the album it’s a druggy beautiful tour de force.
8/10