There are some bands that have been around for a long time, petering out creatively somewhere between albums two and three. They don’t necessarily get bad — they just can’t seem to reach the next level of good.

Cut Copy is not one of those bands.

The band’s fourth LP, “Free Your Mind,” dropped late last year to relatively little fanfare; a shame, since the album is easily the Australian four-piece’s most meticulously assembled release.

Cut Copy’s synth-heavy, pseudo-discotheque sound has evolved and smoothed out over the band’s decade-plus career — earlier jams like “Saturday” still have raw aural edges, while later tunes like “Need You Now” and “Let Me Show You Love” craft their dancey aesthetic into a more tightly spun sound grounded in a more traditional “band” setup. 

Cut Copy has gotten more and less poppier at their core from album to album, but that doesn’t mean that their music has ever suffered from cheapness or oversimplicity along the way, and the band’s North American tour-ending performance at the Hollywood Palladium showed off both their variety of tunes and their ability to work a crowd.

The band’s hour and a half set was a nostalgic trip for those who have followed them since their “Feel the Love” days, spanning all four releases, and pardon the pun, but the April Fool’s Day show was — wait for it — no joke.

Amid a flourish of colored beams, a projection of their album cover text, and at one point, a deliriously undulating hypnosis spiral, Cut Copy electrified the ballroom crowd, and though frontman Dan Whitford technically wasn’t DJing on stage, the band’s setlist was a thoughtfully curated mix of more anthemic, repetition-grounded cuts like “Free Your Mind” and “Hearts on Fire” interspersed with punchier synth jams like “Take Me Over” and “Lights and Music.”

The most popular singalong moments weren’t relegated to just tunes from any particular album. Chants of “If that’s what it takes, then don’t let it tear us apart / even if it breaks your heart” drifted over the band’s sound during “Out There On The Ice,” while a chorus of “Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!”s rang out during “Where I’m Going.” And from the very get-go of the set, audience members moved with the music, busting out un-self conscious dance moves as the band members too wiggled, shuffled, and lost themselves in the set.

The show’s encore capped off the night with a lilting “Walking in the Sky” and the fervent, cascading “Need You Now.” Immediately afterward, the crowd seemed to deflate, and the colorfully-costumed L.A. denizens left the warm dark of the dance floor for the nippy night air, ears and eyes still ringing from Cut Copy’s visual, audio feast.

SETLIST:

 

1. "Explorers"
2. "Take Me Over"
3. "Free Your Mind"
4. "Where I’m Going"
5. "Memory Capsule"
6. "So Haunted"
7. "Hearts on Fire"
8. "Saturdays"
9. "Feel the Love"
10. "Out There On the Ice"
11. "Let Me Show You Love"
12. "Meet Me In The House of Love"
13. "Lights and Music" 
    ENCORE
14. "Walking in the Sky"
15. "Need Your Now"

 

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Originally published here.

Read more of NT's show reviews here.

Reach Music Editor Lilian Min here; follow her on Twitter and Google+.