Great Tune, Late To Bloom

In my younger days, I had a hair trigger when it came to music. If an artist was lucky, they might get their album listened to in full before I proclaimed final judgment. And more often than not, it would be a random assortment of songs, shuffled out of order (I cringe just typing this), and if I strung two or three songs together that didn’t impress, the music was going out the window. Figuratively though, not literally. Because that’s littering, and littering is for the birds.

Thankfully, I have matured musically, if nowhere else in life, since my high school days. Unless I’m completely offended by an album’s contrived inclusions or glaring inadequacies to the point it’s obvious the record company shipped it DOA, every new album gets at least five (cinco!) full play-throughs before I decide if it has enough value to justify a place in my collection. And that particular change in musical methodology has saved this sound-sinner from a life devoid of some amazing music. And the essence of this revelation can be encapsulated in one band: Cut Copy.

This electro-synth-pop/indie/whatever Australian group is one I first encountered about three years ago, after being given their album, In Ghost Colours (2008), by a friend. After getting back to the dorm and throwing it on my iPod, I was immediately enamored with the first track, “Feel The Love.” But as much as I felt the love for the first track, I didn’t have much for the rest of the album. So there it sat, untouched, on my hard drive for about a year. Eventually I resolved to purge my computer of unwanted music, and part of that process became giving each album a fair shake before giving it a yay or nay. I soon realized how amazing the album really was, and how foolish I had been.

After getting over the embarrassment of being so ignorant and depriving myself of one of the best albums I had ever heard, I began wondering why it was I had been so initially short with it. Most of what I came up with pertains to the state of the “modern” music listener, but that gets me too far off track right now, so I’ll save that for another time. After gorging on In Ghost Colours for days, I searched out their first album, 2004's Bright Like Neon Love. Much like In Ghost Colours, I wasn’t crazy about it, but this time, armed with self-realized wisdom, I gave it time to grow on me. And grow it did. Another beautiful, catchy, energetic album. At this point, you would think I learned my lesson, with two great albums and a new favorite band to discredit, rather easily, the error of my old ways.

So, when I heard last year Cut Copy was releasing their third album in early 2011, I had two thoughts: a relieved “THANK GOD, ” and a slightly pained  “How long is THIS one going to take before I realize how much I like it?”  After hearing the first track, “Take Me Over” (Listen: HERE) off Zonoscope (2011), I decided the answer to my second thought would be nary a second.

After months of waiting for the album to come out, I listened to “Take Me Over” about 50 times, finally on non-YouTube quality audio. Ah, sweet relief. However, once I settled into a fair listen of the album, a morose dread came over me. WHAT IS THIS?!?! I thought, feeling like the Tootsie Pop I had been given actually had a center made of coal. And the wrapper didn't even have a star.

Did they really drop the ball here?

Uhhgggggg!

Why is this happening?!?!

Nooooooooooooooooooo!

The first track, “Need You Now” took 53 years to finally kick in, “Sun God” was more than 15 minutes long so it could not possibly be good, and none of them were “Unforgettable Season.”

Obviously, I still hadn’t learned my lesson. After stepping back and reminding myself that Rome wasn’t built on the first listen of Caesar’s Summer of ‘62 B.C. Mixtape, I reminded myself how the last two albums evolved: from “Why do people listen to this?” to “Why doesn’t EVERYONE listen to this?” Slowly but surely, each song became more endearing, every lyric fit more snugly, and the idiosyncrasies of the beats and movements revealed themselves after seemingly hiding behind an idiot-proof cloak. The aforementioned “Need You Now” is now my favorite song off the album, “Sun God” is full of enough ingenious measures to provide a lesser artist with two albums worth of backing material, and “Unforgettable Season” is still where it belongs, on In Ghost Colours.

In summation, the point of this all is that many things can get better with age, even things that at first seem to be beyond such logic, since in reality there is nothing that changes about a song between the first time you hear it and the 100^th. (Unless there’s a remix. Swizzy!) There can be however, a change in you though, whether it’s your mood, stress, or your subconscious willingness to accept something. I don't know why some songs and albums take longer than others to strike the right chord in your mind, especially when you're aware that it happens. But it does, and you just have to deal with it and give them a shot. You wouldn’t give up if a flower didn’t bloom the day after you put the seed in the ground. Give yourself a chance to let music bloom too.

Sidenote: I will say my least favorite song on Zonoscope is “Pharaohs & Pyramids,” the track Pitchfork singled out as the best on the album. Go figure.