Lights And Music: Austinist Interviews Cut Copy

It's interesting, too, that many bands that may have influenced you like New Order and Kraftwerk had a reputation for being dull live acts or difficult bands to watch despite their great music. Cut Copy doesn't seem to have that problem now, but did you in the early days?

I think we always tried to right from the start. We realized that the more the crowd got into it, the easier our job was going to be, and that it would even take some of the focus off of us if the crowd was going a bit crazy. So it's always been the goal to get the audience involved, and it generally hasn't been too hard. We enjoy that challenge, especially when you're a support act, where it can be quite tough. We have the odd gig sometimes where it doesn't work, but usually we get the crowd involved. I think they [the audience] appreciate it as well, because they're included a bit more. It's funny - when we first came to America, we had heard that crowds were stand-offish, and that nobody danced here, but we've found it to be quite the opposite.

Do you have any recollections you're willing to share with us about SXSW 2008? It seemed like you played about 10 times here last year - how was that experience for the band?

It's crazy - it's like a giant sports carnival or something. It's kind of funny being here today when it's not on - I can actually walk down the street and get into restaurants and eat!

Austin isn't always an epic parade of drunken rock stars is what you're saying?

That's exactly what it's like! But we've been quite lucky: we've actually had really good shows here at SXSW. We've heard other bands say that there's just too much happening and that it didn't benefit them at all, but I think that we got a lot of festival offers based off our appearances here. So we found it to be very beneficial. But it's nice to turn up a play a headline show outdoors outside of that conference - there's a lot more room to move.

We've read that the band are sketching songs now for a new album, and that you'll be recording again very soon. Are you playing any of that material on this spring's tour?

We're not really playing any brand new material right now. We're playing a B-side that's never been in the set, and a cover, but we really won't focus on those new songs until we're finished with the tour. We talk a lot about the new material, and buy lots of records and gear while we're on tour, but until we're done, we don't know what those songs are really going to be. But we are excited to get home after a year on the road - we're exhausted. It'll be nice to get creative again and start on the next one.

One thing that sets Cut Copy apart is the optimism in your music - there's not a lot of that in indie rock these days. Is that a conscious decision to focus on that, or was that simply the way the last recording sessions went?

It's kind of a funny thing - we hear that a lot. But when you go back and listen to the lyrics, we have a lot of stories about love lost and that type of thing, but it's offset against this uplifting music with brighter chords. So it's that contrast that we find interesting - we think of bands like The Beach Boys who did it really well. They had melancholy lyrics but were really uplifting. These days, I think Phoenix are good at that as well. So we played upon that on this record. We like it that people have smiles on their faces as they're singing a song about a girl that's left them. (Laughs) It's really good.