The Boston House of Blues felt like the place to be when the Australian electro-poppy Cut Copy came to town. The throng of twenty-somethings in attendance exuded an "I was cool in high school and still am" vibe, and nearly everybody brought their dancing shoes. DJ Knightlife's techno beats primed us for the main event and had the burgeoning clientele swaying and bumping in the (capacious) musical hall.
The songs mostly adhered to the 2008 release In Ghost Colours, and the Aussies kicked off the set with "Hearts on Fire," racks of fluorescent lights exploding into colorful flashes and patterns behind them. Frontman and Graham Chapman dopplegänger Dan Whitford's vocals provided a perfect complement to the synthesized bass and steady beats. His nasal and inoffensive delivery floated melodically through the pounding ebbs of electronic sound, his wiry arms often outstretched. The band showed from the starting gate that they had figured out the necessity of tension and release in their live numbers, as each treble-laden collapse into a deep bassy groove resulted in hands flung upward and energized bodies bopping anew.
After smooth segues between a couple tunes, the four musicians reached back to their debut album, Bright Like Neon Love and unleashed the fattest of their synthesized bass via "Saturdays," which may have raised some eyebrows in rooms measuring Boston's seismic activity. But there existed dynamism in Cut Copy's set, as acoustic-led "Feel the Love" displayed that the band could take a little off. They then charged back with Tim Hoey switching over to the electric guitar, strumming walls of distorted electricity and creating an immense atmosphere in the hard-rocking "So Haunted."
As the show pressed on, there were moments during which music loops blared through the speakers while the band members were disengaged with any actual music-making. This, I suppose is to be expected when working with the nuanced complexities of loops and beats, but regardless, it detracted very little from the performance. Typically the instrumentation broke down into driving drum beats, a steady stream of synth, funky bass, and a mishmash of guitar or miscellaneous loopy enhancement. Backup vocals were another important and ubiquitous facet of Cut Copy's sound, usually drenched in reverb and warmly rounding out the soundscape.
The band reemerged for their encore to perform three final songs, Whitford appropriately leaving us with the impossibly catchy "Lights and Music." I left the HOB glowing, with both lights and music on my mind and a thorough calisthenic workout under my belt.
