No, this is not a misprint.

Released two weeks ago, Melbourne electro-popsters Cut Copy debuted at number one in the Australian charts with their new album In Ghost Colours.

Granted, the band has waited four years to gift a new LP to their scores of fans, but the result is surprising nonetheless.  With singles ‘Hearts on Fire’, ‘So Haunted’ and ‘Light and Music’ released to great responses over the past 12 months, In Ghost Colours shouldered great expectation and has delivered, setting the bar higher for the wave of new electro acts that seem to be emerging by the day.

The album was recorded under the watchful eye of Tim Goldsworthy of UNKLE and LCD Sound System fame in New York’s DFA studios.  With its release complete, slots on the Coachella and V festivals imminent and a national tour on the cards, times are exciting for the trio.

Drummer Mitchell Scott chatted to WB just prior to the launch of the album, filling us in on all things Cutters related.

It’s been almost four years between albums, what do you attribute the wait to?

Well, there’s a couple of things really, when our album came out in Australia, which was 2004, we sort of kicked off our touring here and then I think it was a year later it came out in the States, and that’s when we started touring over there. Then another 6 months after the states it came out in the UK so then we started our touring cycle there.  

We were sort of a year and a half behind, in the UK especially, so after touring for a year it was almost three years back here. Once we found a producer, we recorded the record in March of last year so we’ve pretty much had it finished since then with the exception of some mixing touches.  Since then it has been getting our label into a position to release it.

Did this relate to the band releasing three singles before the album?

For us it’s a bit of a frustrating thing, not from a business point of view but somebody being in a band, as a musician you just want to have new music out there. You hate the feeling of just sitting on your hands, waiting for music to come out that you’ve already written and it’s a frustrating experience waiting for something to happen. So that’s partly why we’ve pushed to have new stuff out there, even though strictly from a business point of view it probably doesn’t make too much sense to put singles out in isolation which we’ve done a couple of times now.

What do you think sets In Ghost Colours apart from Bright Like Neon Love?

I think it’s moved along in terms of how we play and the songwriting. Some of the influences are a little bit different as well, and one of the main things about it is probably the amount of time we’ve spent in the studio recording, which is pretty different when you compare it to Bright Like Neon Love – which was recorded in just over a day.

A lot of that record was sort of carried over from demos, given that a lot of this stuff was started as in-bedroom and computer recordings. It was all really new to us then, we’d just sort of do these takes. I remember screwing around and getting the drums set up for ‘Bright Neon Payphone’ and they were like “Oh ok cool, we’re done!” I had no idea we were even rolling and it ended up being the one on the record.  

On this one we spent six weeks in a studio in New York recording, and we pretty much re-recorded everything, because again it started as recording in bedrooms and on computers. We re-tracked everything – re-did all the drums, re-did guitars – which is something we’ve never really had the luxury of doing before, so I think that’ll make a pretty big difference.”

Would you consider In Ghost Colours to be more of a pop sound than Bright Like Neon Love?

Quite possibly, I mean I think it’s more song based and some of the influences are mixture of classic pop stuff like ELO and Fleetwood Mac, and maybe even Beach Boys.  But there are some conflicting influences as well, weird pop music like Animal Collective or Panda Bear and some of the Krautrock stuff that has its roots in pop music but just gets a little weird and twisted.

Is contrast an important quality for the band to achieve?

I think that’s one of the things we focus on. We’ve never worked at being great musicians in a technical sense but we’ve focused our attentions on the production side of things and the soundscapes that you might come up with and the songwriting.  

That’s where Tim Goldsworthy, who produced the record, was important. He was pretty clear after listening to the demos that the music didn’t really need production in terms of ripping apart the songs and giving direction on which bits should go where, like that kind of real songwriting production. He was more interested in coming in and just messing with the atmospherics and the vibe. Often that would be him getting stuff in for us. He’s an absolutely compulsive Ebay junkie, so there’d just be stuff arriving everyday!  So that’s probably a large part of his role: coming up with really interesting atmospheric bits

Does In Ghost Colours revolve around a central theme?

I think there probably are some central themes running through the record.  We didn’t try to make it really like that. I guess that’s sort of something that came through having more time in the studio.

One of the things we were trying to do is blend our influences and have more common elements running through the songs so that there wouldn’t be any real juxtaposition or ones that would stand out more than others. And theme-wise there are things that trace through the record as well.

Why do you think the indie-dance group of bands such as The Presets, Midnight Juggernauts and yourselves enjoy a lot more overseas success that other genres?

There’s a real scene of live dance music in Australia, where it doesn’t really exist so much overseas. A lot of the touring acts like the French scene and the Ed Banger stuff is really great music but when you see those bands tour out here and play live wherever it is, there’s not so many live shows as it’ll be more often than not DJs. And part of the scene in Australia is that they are really strong live shows and those live shows are almost as important as what happens on the record.  

A lot of people have even commented: ‘Oh I’ve never really liked dance music until bands started doing it live’ and I think that makes things a lot more accessible, especially to some people.

When you toured overseas with Franz Ferdinand you seemed to come home with a lot more new fans.  Do you think it was a big launching point for Cut Copy?

Yeah, it definitely felt that way. Even when we were doing it we were constantly pinching ourselves and thinking how amazing it was. It was just great to be a part of a tour that was so well run and with so many great people to work with, but the shows themselves were just brilliant for us and we found it was a much different experience than touring as a support in Australia, which we’ve done quite a few times with some pretty decent sized bands.

I think it must be a cultural thing in the States, the number of people that will come down to watch the support so far outstrips what you’d get in Australia.  It was a really good response; we just weren’t ready for how well our shows were going to go. We kind of expected a bit of a hard slog like you play to almost nobody or there might be people just starting to arrive or something and you’ll get a polite applause after a song or something.  But the shows were just great you’d get a whole bunch of people down there all the time and people would be dancing around, down the front, and yeah we were really blown away with that as it was a much better response that we’d ever imagined.

What about the Daft Punk tour?

It was brilliant!  It was just awesome because that’s been a band that we’ve wanted to play with forever really, as they are some of our musical idols. And we’ve been really unlucky because we’ve played at some of the same festivals as them a couple of different times overseas but it always seems to happen that we’re on different days so we’d never got to see them until they came out here to play. So it was just phenomenal because so many people in the crowd had been waiting so long to see them for so many years, fans in Australia were just losing their minds waiting. And I think that carried through into the support acts, everyone was just there for a good time so it was a good crowd to play in front of, but then with the added benefit of getting to watch Daft Punk play every night, it was brilliant!

You’ve been sporting a new member on stage for the live shows, was this a result of the new material?

Well it is pretty much just for some of the songs off the newer record. You know, we started out as a four-piece, but then Bennett our old bass played left and went off to become a doctor of philosophy. So we replaced him with a sampler for a while. It played synth-bass and sometimes Tim would swap around and play bass.  But quite a few songs on the new record felt like they needed a couple of guitars and also bass, so we got in a live member.

John is the new addition. His project was The Hungry Ghosts who are a pretty amazing Melbourne band and a friend of Tim’s.

With the album coming out and a big tour coming up what are you the most excited about and what expectations are there?

We’re just mostly excited about having a proper album out and getting everywhere to play the record and see what people’s responses are.  I mean I can’t wait to do a proper Australian tour, but other than that there’s the times where our shows happen to intersect with somewhere amazing like we’re getting over to Barcelona and then Mexico on our way to the States so obviously that’s going to be brilliant.  But the main thing we want to do is just a proper album tour and play to the people in Australia.