HEALTH

Get Color

(Lovepump United)

Record Review by Alexis Roberts

HEALTH started getting quite a bit of attention a few short years ago when they filtered out of the clique of bands that frequent the Downtown Los Angeles craphole (in a good way) venue, The Smell. Once they ventured out into the real world they did things like press limited edition colored vinyl and tour with NIN. The self-titled release started the buzz, which never really came to an end as the band continued to tour and release remixes pretty steadily since that album.

HEALTH, unlike many buzz bands of the minute, never fully fell off the radar. The DIY attitude that they used for recording their first album filtered into their work and tour ethic and left us all anticipating what would be next for the neon-clad quartet.

Get Color, the appropriately titled follow up album, seems to have escaped the curse of the sophomore slump that so many musicians in the same boat as HEALTH frequently run into. As listeners we set the bar high and are anticipating a stellar follow up - and when we don’t get that, we feel like we’ve been let down.

Get Color tones down the jarring electronics enough to let melody show through in their songs.  The vocals resonate more and are generally more present on Get Color (and if you listen closely on a song like "Get Tigers," you just may be able to make out some lyrics). It’s much easier to get lost in their songs like "Death +" than it was in a song like "Girl Attorney," yet both songs still share that same HEALTH-y sensibility; loud, repetitive and a bit elusive. If you’ve seen HEALTH live then you know that they all play (real) instruments; just listening to the album it’s hard to know what is making which noise at any given moment. Sometimes it sounds like sirens and crickets, while other times you can hear very clearly that there are drums, guitars and vocals.

Overall, Get Color has a much more noticeable flow. As a whole, it feels more meticulously arranged than its predecessor without losing sight of that same attitude and spunk that made us love them the first time around.