Initially crafted during a cold winter spent in Copenhagen by Cut Copy's driving force Dan Whitford, the band's 2020 album Freeze, Melt is their most inward looking and sparsely constructed work to date. Inspired by the chilly sleekness of classic techno and the warm embrace of ambient music, the sound is a drastic left turn from the stadium-friendly sound of Haiku from Zero. Where that album was like a clarion call for listeners to lose their stuff on the dancefloor while surrounded by the sweaty masses, this is a record made for listening to alone with a warm mug of something comforting in hand. Whitford and the band strip away almost everything apart from simple drum machines and gleaming synths, leaving ample space for simple melodies and quietly aching vocals. It's nothing like the previous album, and not much like anything they've done before. Songs like "Stop, Horizon," with its long, complicated instrumental buildup that bleeds into a lightly pulsing late-night disco ballad, or "Cold Water," which does feature the kind of bubbling hooks their best songs have but buries them in subtle drum tracks and interlocking synth patterns, show a healthy amount of ambition and sonic adventurism. Others dial back the scale of the arrangements to something approaching beautifully stark minimalism, especially the slowly evolving "Love Is All We Share" or the shimmering ballad "Rain." These songs make an impact by drawing the listener in close and whispering softly instead of bopping them on the head with an ice-covered disco ball like usual. "Breaking Glass" is the only track that sounds like classic Cut Copy, and even that song pulls back right when you think it's going to explode into a giant hook. Freeze, Melt is a daring move for the band; they aren't exactly turning their backs on the huge, happy sound that earned them their glittering place in the dance-rock firmament, but they do bring their sound down to earth in admirable, emotionally affecting fashion. In the process, they prove that they don't need to make music that's great to dance to in order to make music that's great.