Album Of The Week: Cut Copy Free Your Mind

At what point does mastery become boring? Cut Copy are now almost a decade deep into a career of nothing but dizzy starry-eyed dance-rock anthems, and their sound has evolved in tiny fits and starts since they debuted with 2004's Bright Like Neon Love. That album was one of the first things I put on my first iPod, and I started liking it a whole lot more immediately afterward. Whenever a Bright Like Neon Love track came up on shuffle -- wherever I was, whatever I was doing, whatever mood I was in -- I was happy to hear it. Back then, there was something novel in the idea of a band who fused dance-music sonics to indie-pop warmth, and who had Trapper Keeper-style portraits of Giorgio Moroder and Guided By Voices in their liner notes. That's gone now that everyone listens to everything and a good 30% of what gets played on top-40 radio is both vaguely dancey and vaguely indie. But four albums in, and Cut Copy still have yet to write a bad song. That might not make them the most exciting or boundary-pushing group out there, but on it's own level, that's amazing.