Cut Copy have built a career for themselves that anyone would be jealous of -- they're a roving dance troupe whose sole purpose is to make people dance. Hitting Toronto's Sound Academy, the Australian electro-pop outfit launched into a night-long wall of synth sound.
Cut Copy's records are highly polished, inevitably meaning something will be lost in translation live; that happened, but not in a bad way. They proved themselves to be strong live musicians -- as strong as they needed to be when often relying on synth loops -- with more than enough charisma to carry the room.
Frontman Dan Whitford's arms were rarely by his side as he conducted the audience's dance party. If he wasn't playing the keys or guitar, he was throwing his arms into the air and commanding the room to dance. As the show progressed, he wandered further from his corner of the stage, maximizing his space to dance along to the music he created.
Cut Copy opened strong with In Ghost Colours closer "Visions / Nobody Lost, Nobody Found" and set a high-energy precedent for the rest of the show. Newer tunes were sometimes lost on the crowd, though. The band are on tour to support this year's Zonoscope, but it was the classics (as classic as music from a few years ago can be) that got the audience the most worked up. The high point of energy was during the band's most well-known tune, "Lights and Music," which sent the whole Sound Academy bouncing furiously around the room. It was a quick decline after, though -- Whitford had to beg the audience to dance to Zonoscope's "Pharaohs & Pyramids" two songs later.
The band closed their main set with "Sun God," a 15-minute epic that relies on a great synth loop that, unfortunately, gets old too soon. As much as they tried to invigorate it -- at one point, guitarist Tim Hoey held his guitar in the air, punching the back to force out more eclectic noise -- the audience just didn't know what to do after a while. But there was some redemption during the encore: the audience responded with glee as they finished with the great Zonoscope opener "Need You Now" and In Ghost Colours favourite "Out There on the Ice." The audience loved it and often that's what matters most.
Cut Copy's records are highly polished, inevitably meaning something will be lost in translation live; that happened, but not in a bad way. They proved themselves to be strong live musicians -- as strong as they needed to be when often relying on synth loops -- with more than enough charisma to carry the room.
Frontman Dan Whitford's arms were rarely by his side as he conducted the audience's dance party. If he wasn't playing the keys or guitar, he was throwing his arms into the air and commanding the room to dance. As the show progressed, he wandered further from his corner of the stage, maximizing his space to dance along to the music he created.
Cut Copy opened strong with In Ghost Colours closer "Visions / Nobody Lost, Nobody Found" and set a high-energy precedent for the rest of the show. Newer tunes were sometimes lost on the crowd, though. The band are on tour to support this year's Zonoscope, but it was the classics (as classic as music from a few years ago can be) that got the audience the most worked up. The high point of energy was during the band's most well-known tune, "Lights and Music," which sent the whole Sound Academy bouncing furiously around the room. It was a quick decline after, though -- Whitford had to beg the audience to dance to Zonoscope's "Pharaohs & Pyramids" two songs later.
The band closed their main set with "Sun God," a 15-minute epic that relies on a great synth loop that, unfortunately, gets old too soon. As much as they tried to invigorate it -- at one point, guitarist Tim Hoey held his guitar in the air, punching the back to force out more eclectic noise -- the audience just didn't know what to do after a while. But there was some redemption during the encore: the audience responded with glee as they finished with the great Zonoscope opener "Need You Now" and In Ghost Colours favourite "Out There on the Ice." The audience loved it and often that's what matters most.