Customer Reviews

Get Color

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When I heard the Health album from Health, there were tracks that cut straight to the bone and really got to me, but alongside these cuts were others that sounded a lot like a band trying to find its way. One remix album and a single later, and to my ears it sounds like the group has locked into something powerful, brutal, and beautiful all at the same time.

That aforementioned album of remixes may or may not have been the major reasoning behind their slightly new direction, but "Get Color" is a real grinder, with songs that sound like they're built from pure sinew and bone and primed for dancing (or at least thrashing about at a fast rhythmic pace).

The album kicks off with "In Heat," and it gets things going with a less than two-minute kick in the teeth that layers squeals of atonal synth, shimmering electronics, powerful drums and bass and light, almost ethereal male vocals. It's a perfect opener in that it sets the tone for the rest of the album, but swirls with intrigue and never feels like it completely locks in for too long.

From there, the album gets even better. First single "Die Slow" is one of those cuts that should become a huge hit (but would probably only due so in an alternate reality) as a lumbering synth groan and more bludgeoning drums give way to rave-up choruses that incredibly catchy, while "Before Tigers" powers up again and again by veering back and forth between huge crests of guitar noise and sprays of digital haze.

For my money, though, the best song on the entire album is the blistering "We Are Water," a four-minute burner that arrives near the end of the disc and really sounds like the group simply trying to step on the pedal a little bit more for the entirety of a song. Taking elements from all songs previous (dancey, but heavy rhythms, blasts of electronic noise and guitars and light vocals), it steps up the intensity incrementally, letting loose with a glorious blast about two-thirds of the way through that's one of my favorite moments in music for the year so far.

So yeah, it's probably needless to say at this point that "Get Color" has shot up my list of favorite albums of the year so far for 2009. At 9 songs and 33 minutes in running length, it only begs for repeated listening as well.

[...]

Quick question: What was the most important rock album of the '00s?

Answer: For 9 years and 8 months, there wasn't one. Give Spin credit for figuring this out and not making a best of the decade list at all. They saw it coming in their '85-'05 list where no '00s rock album ranked higher than #48. In one way or another the best rock music of the decade was a development of earlier sounds, from OK Computer to Nevermind to Murmur to punk to The Beatles to Chuck Berry. Nothing from 2000 to August 2009 sounded like a new direction in rock music.

Then HEALTH released Get Color with a few months to spare in the decade. This is a "noise rock" band incorporating elements of melodic pop into their noise and coming up with something startlingly original. Nirvana was famous for combining fast parts and slow parts in the same song; Get Color does the same thing for noise parts and melody parts. It's not pop melodies played loudly, and it's not a band trying to hide their pop songs behind a wall of noise. The melodies here are bright slivers of sunshine periodically breaking through the cloud cover of noise. Beyond that it's hard to describe this music, since it's so different from anything that's come before. This must have been what it felt like to hear Surfer Rosa in 1988. The stagnant post-Radiohead rock scene needs this desperately.

HEALTH is already known for the dance remixes of their music, and when I listen to this album it makes me want to hear the process in reverse: HEALTH reworking other pop songs in their noise style. Every listener will have their own set of songs that come to mind for this; I'll start with The Chameleons' "In Shreds", Yeah Yeah Yeahs' "Hysteric", Tears for Fears' "Shout", and the Loud Family's "Don't Respond, She Can Tell".

The sound of Get Color is going to have an enormous influence on the best rock music of the next decade. Look for it on Spin's best albums of the century list in 2015 or 2020.

One, maybe two tracks have any value. The rest sounds like a bunch of kids making senseless racket in their mom's garage.