The first time I encountered HEALTH was at a little known hipster ho-down called the Pitchfork Music Festival. A friend and I had just left Boris, whose equipment had crapped out under the intense heat of the 2008 summer. We had just grabbed a beer with a water chaser, because it was that hot, and heard some serious racket emerging from the "C" stage. Something over there sounded like This Heat at their loudest. When we got there it was chaos, in both the crowd and the stage. Tribal drums, noise, the obligatory screeching, and this little lead singer/ guitarist that punctuated the mess with his melodic falsetto and crisp post punk guitar. It was a sight and sound to behold, and immediately I knew that the first thing I had to do when I got home was pick up HEALTH's debut album.
I did that, but it didn't compare to the spectacle I experienced at Pitchfork. When HEALTH announced that they were releasing their follow up "Get Color," I immediately perked up and waited anxiously to see if the band I saw that day could make an album worthy of the sound I heard that day. To say that they did would be an understatement. "Get Color" satisfies across the board. A perfect mix of noise and post-punk, the album finds the band simultaneously at their most melodic and most chaotic. Just as I remember them on that brutally hot day two years ago.
Like all great albums "Get Color" is not a collection of singles, but a singular listening experience. Pieces feed off of and bleed into one another and when it is all finished you are left with an exhilarating, brutal and mesmerizing battery of melody, noise and beats. It is razor sharp clean and tightly constructed, experimental, yet amazing accessible, devastating and beautiful; more importantly, "Get Color" is something you want to hear over and over again.
"In Violet" live
"We Are Water" live
"Nice Girls" live
HEALTH "DIE SLOW" from Lovepump United on Vimeo.
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