NOTE: All photos are copyright of Howard Shiau Photography 2025
It’s been less than a month since we covered synth-pop legend Andy Bell, singer for 80s hitmaker Erasure, and we’re back with another synth-pop act, this time Australian band Cut Copy. Formed by lead vocalist and keyboardist Dan Whitford in 2001, they had a number of hits during that decade, primarily “Hearts on Fire” and “Lights and Music” from their sophomore studio album In Ghost Colours and “Need You Now” from their follow-up Zonoscope. After a break post-Covid, they released their most recent album Moments in September of this year including single “Belong to You”, their collaboration with indie pop singer Kate Bollinger. The steel guitar sound from that single reminds me of a Prince-adjacent 80s song that I just can’t seem to place. On their first North American tour since 2022, they stopped at Electric City in Buffalo to get our hearts racing and warm our bodies on a cold night, November 20th.
The opener was Norwegian artist Ora the Molecule (aka Nora Schjelderup), a eclectic nom de plume that aptly fit her esthetic as she took the stage in all red from her fingertips to toes, topped off with a disco ball helmet! Her set had begun with her off-stage and “Becoming a Human”, the first track from her most recent album, 2025’s Dance Therapy, began. It’s a conversation between her and a computer oracle, giving the atmosphere a futuristic sound that is evident throughout the record. With a light and airy voice, Ora then got the party started with “Intergalactic Dance”. Her music is straight out of 70s disco and had the whole crowd dancing! My favorites were probably the tongue in cheek “Nobody Cares” which starts with the lyric “they only love you when you’re dead”, and Løveskatt, sung in Norwegian which I understood none of but couldn’t stop dancing nonetheless!
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When Cut Copy took the stage, it was with only three members rather than their typical four. It seems that guitarist Tim Hoey was sick and couldn’t make the show. They didn’t miss a beat though as, with today’s technology more than ever before, it’s a lot easier to use one instrument’s backing track to add a missing piece to the musical puzzle. As for the others, Whitford’s vocals are just so smooth and the harmonies with bassist Ben Browning were spot on! As with many synth-pop bands, they are often anchored by the rhythm section and Cut Copy was no exception with Mitchell Scott quietly and maybe not so quietly providing the beats and Browning with the ever present bass tones underneath the keyboard melodies. I’ve always felt that Cut Copy combined vocals that sounded like they could have come straight from Bernard Sumner of New Order with a combination of 80s New Wave and 2000s club music. The set itself didn’t seem like it was heavily weighted towards their latest record as they only played five songs from Moments, rather they played more songs from Ghost Colours which makes sense since it was their most popular studio album. I was hoping, by some miracle, that Kate Bollinger would make an appearance for their collab but it was not to be. That being said, there was much bouncing and dancing to be done throughout the evening and Cut Copy saved their most popular songs for last, leaving us a bit of a sweaty mess afterwards as we exited to the freezing cold.
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