Physical Copies’ fun, electro-funk new single

PHYSICAL COPIES High Hopes (single)

★★★★ 1/2 out of 5

The weird boys are back in town! But of course they were here all along and this week marks the first-released single off Physical Copies’ fantastically dizzying and super-fun new electro-funk rock album, with fittingly amazing cover art by Greg o.

In a normal world, we’d have received that whole album by now, but, says drummer Clint Frazier, “We’re gonna release it one single at a time until we can play live and do a proper release.”

So, kind of a network TV, episodic approach; that works, something to look forward to besides the office Christmas party standing six feet apart wondering whatever happened to that Gary guy.

And because the Great Pause is such uncharted territory, let’s parcel this review the same way we’re getting the album, like a Lego set on the living room carpet.

Not for the first time, the ever-expanding Copies on High Hopes bring us a song of mundane existential angst which, in this pandemic thing, escalates to new and certain terror: the loss of a cellphone, and thus a link to our corporately curated human connection.

Woeful yet confident, it’s a slow but energetic sourdough riser, with beautiful New Order string-plucking and a far-off wailing that sounds like Ben Disaster stuck inside that bumpy alien space tube from Star Trek IV.

Willie Dieminzzz, as always, has the best new wave heartbreak voice in the city, simultaneously as deep and high as Carl Sagan (look that up). He also plays modular synth and guitar, and Matt Bouchard on bass and Graeme Mackinnon on guitar round out the Copies.

Knowing the rest of the album I can tell you this song tracks nicely, but as a stand-alone fantasy of losing your phone walking through the park, this captures that inner narrator joining in the chorus of geese honking at you in mockery.

“I’m trying hard not to stay me” is the standout philosophical idea here in a world where too often we all act like performers desperate for applause.

But because it took four and a half years to come our way, that’s a good number to rate it.

Have a listen at soundcloud. com/physicalcopies780, lyrics below, support the band by paying $1 on bandcamp — and hold on to that phone, baby!