Caught Live: Cut Copy @ Tripod, Dublin

A bizarrely brief set from one of our favourite upbeat, antipodean electro acts left the crowd decidedly nonplussed in Dublin’s Tripod on Tuesday. While some welcomed the shorter set, allowing them an early departure on a school night, initial bemusement gave way to disappointment for many in attendance.
 
And we had every right to feel let-down; when a band is blessed with an arsenal of buoyant, catchy crowd-pleasers like ‘So Haunted’, ‘Hearts On Fire’, ‘Lights & Music’, ‘Feel The Love’ and ‘Out There On The Ice’, and can ally these gems with frontman Dan Whitford’s jerky, foot-flitting presence, it’s understandable for the crowd to want no end to the party. And, despite the Tuesday slot in a venue a touch larger than was needed, Cut Copy certainly put on a party, driven by deep, invasive drum bass and those superb synth hooks.
 
Like many parties, though, this one had its lulls; slightly worryingly, these seemed to arrive whenever the band delved into newer material. But this likely said more about the audience than about what we can expect from the as-yet-untitled follow-up to 2008’s splendid In Ghost Colours. It can, after all, take a little time for a cool stranger to become a warm friend. Encouragingly, the new numbers did not merely seem like a direct cut or copy from past triumphs. Rather, Whitford and co. are pasting together something fresh: from the Beta Bandesque stylings of ‘Where I’m Going’* to the Caribbean windpipes of ‘Let Us Dance’, they are clearly not afraid to experiment beyond their magic formula.
 
With the band’s aforementioned third album on the way in the new year, we can all look forward to what these experiments may bring. This time, however, as the old adage goes, time certainly flew, and it was all over well before the crowd’s feet and fists could bop and pump no more.
 
*Available as a free download at www.cutcopy.net
 
Photo gallery of the show here.