There is so little opportunity to escape into some semblance of America in Azerbaijan that when volunteers get together to socialize there are always significant resistance strategies at play. People will cook American recipes, will drink, will smoke, will do anything to forget, if only for a few brief hours, that we are in a place that calls for such resistance. And as sure as we can be that there will be opportunity and support for retreat we can be as sure that the emotional hangover will be there the next day.
On the mashrutka (mini-bus) back to Xachmaz the day was grey and rainy. Even on a day like that, its easy to see why Azerbaijan is one of the oldest places of human civilization. Its winter and the countryside is still green and the soil fertile. Yet the landscape evokes a national emotional hangover; Azerbaijan dealing with the nausea of a polluted and restricting Soviet past. The very earth itself works to process the toxins out of its system.
And I suppose this sense of moving beyond the excess, working towards a potentially never obtained state of balance, is the theme I hear in Cut Copy's excellent new album Zonoscope. Moving beyond 2008's electro banger excess In Ghost Colors, Zonoscope, musically, is the morning after, dealing with the after effects of all-night parties, club hopping, waking up after not going to sleep.
Zonoscope is an album of reflection. Channeling Echo & the Bunnymen and New Order, Cut Copy pieces together last night from texts, voicemails, and souvenirs buried in pockets. Looking to each to clarify the doomed question 'What happened last night?' We all have our moments of escape, but there is the process of rediscovery when we retreat too far back.
'Need You Now' is an immediate standout and will certainly be a top track this year. Listen to it here.
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