Cut Copy Select All

BY Rowena Robertson

In any local music scene obsessed with maintaining ‘integrity’, scoring a major label deal, overseas recognition and actual record sales can generate rancour and suspicion rather than being a cause for celebration. Within this insular community, ‘bigger’ is certainly far from ‘better’: instead it becomes synonymous with ‘sell-out’, ‘bland’ and ‘crap’.

Often, nothing about the now-successful band’s music or outlook has changed. What has happened is an arbitrary shift in perception: just as positive meanings were originally imposed upon the group, now negative meanings are imposed.

A case in point is Melbourne electronic act Cut Copy. Five years ago the group (at that point a solo project for Dan Whitford) was running nights in obscure Melbourne laneway bars. By 2004 Cut Copy had gained three more members, and in April of that year put out its debut album, Bright Like Neon Love.

The album had a UK release in May 2005, to rapturous reviews, and was re-issued in October by Modular (Cut Copy’s Australian label) affiliate Island. Franz Ferdinand started name-checking them on British radio and then took them on a US tour as support act. Scottish electronic artist Mylo named Bright Like Neon Love his favourite album of last year. Cut Copy had officially arrived.

Back home, talk of the group having sold out began to rumble among other bands and music message board habitués. Particular criticism was levelled at Cut Copy for its involvement in the Children Of The Night series of gigs in February 2006, which, to many an indie purist’s horror, was sponsored by Levi’s.

Cut Copy has also started its own label, Cutters, which releases records by up-and-coming Australian acts (KIM, Midnight Juggernauts) to the overseas market. The label has the underground, specialist feel of a traditional indie – all the releases are available on 12” vinyl only, and all the artwork is done by Whitford’s design studio, Alter.

Of course, some find an inspired idea like this difficult to take at face value. Is Cutters, as the cynics have suggested, an attempt to continue to appear independent/underground in spite of overseas success and corporate affiliations?

Anyone who believes this is missing a couple of important points. First, Cut Copy never purported to be independent. The band has been on Modular, an EMI imprint, from its incipience. Thus, its involvement with corporations such as Levi’s is in no way inimical to its values. Second, those who cling to the ideal of pure independence in the music sphere have most likely never been in a band in Australia.

Australia is a tiny musical market and there are a huge number of bands clamouring for a slice of a very small pie. Most start off playing in toilets to a handful of unappreciative punters and never move beyond this. If a band is given the chance to be heard by a wider audience – and maybe to make a little cash – who could begrudge them that? Obscurity is depressing, demoralising, embittering – just ask the Go-Betweens.

While it’s unfashionable in this postmodern landscape to talk about an artist’s intention, perhaps it is worth considering in the case of Cut Copy. From the outset, Dan Whitford has gone about his musical career in a way that speaks of great integrity. He started off tinkering away on cheap musical equipment in his bedroom; this doesn’t exactly suggest ‘cynical strategist’. He has never capitulated to musical fashions (ie the ‘new rock revival’ of 2002-3). About the Cutters project he says:

“We’re definitely about quality not quantity, love, not money and all the things that are probably bad business, but [which] hopefully will lead to some longevity in the annals of music.”

Is it really such a stretch to believe that what Whitford does – his music, his label, his graphic design – he does for love?

Our culture constantly encourages us to analyse, deconstruct and question. While such an approach is probably valuable when thinking about, say, the political sphere, perhaps it isn’t always useful when applied to the musical one. In many cases, a band is merely the blameless eye of a storm of hype, paranoia and over-analysis.

Cut Copy appears to have achieved a balance between realism – that is, accepting that corporate involvement might be necessary if their music is to be heard – and maintaining an underground spirit. Maybe, just maybe, you really can have it all.