In Good HEALTH

13th April 2009
The Albert
HEALTH

If you can’t stand unbelievably abstract similes, look away now, because this review is going to contain a lot of them. Apologies, but that’s just the way it’s going to have to be. There’s a great difficulty in describing what HEALTH (all caps, don’t ask me why) actually sound like, chiefly because they sound like precisely nothing else. Looking at the four men standing on stage as the gig starts, you might be forgiven for thinking that the sound they’re about to produce can’t be that radical. I see a drummer, a bassist, and two guitarists, one with a microphone, one with a synthesiser. Sure, there are a lot of wires and pedals going on, but they can’t sound that dissimilar to a traditional rock band, right?

Wrong. Because after about five minutes of unadulterated mayhem, band members clambering over each other, beating drums, screaming, hammering god-knows-what buttons to produce full-throated blasts of multi-layered noise, you come to realise that you have never seen a gig like this before, and will probably never be lucky enough to see again.

HEALTH are only doing five dates on this UK tour, and Brighton’s The Albert is the first venue to play host. They’re famous enough (Their collaboration with Crystal Castles on ‘Crimewave’ charted in the UK top ten) that they don’t need to play gigs this small, but on tonight’s evidence alone, booking HEALTH into a succession of sweatbox rooms above pubs might just prove to be an artistic masterstroke. The sell-out crowd are packed in tight to the low stage, and the energy and enthusiasm is palpable, only increasing in fervour with the painstaking sound-check, each individual drum tested and retested a hundred times until the desired ‘robots fighting in a lift shaft’ tone is achieved.

Then suddenly, without warning, the show begins with new single ‘Die Slow’, hinting at a move into more dance-oriented territory, perhaps buoyed by the success of remix album ‘HEALTH//DISCO’, certainly the point in the band’s career at which they began to garner more attention in the music press. The band have remarked in interviews how often people come to their shows and shout for a song that has already been played, not recognising it from the remix, and it seems that their response has been to hone their chaotic noise palate into rhythms and grooves.

That’s not to say there isn’t plenty of chaos going on, but it steps up a notch when the band plunge into early single ‘Triceratops’, showcasing what made their noise-rock debut so suitable for remixing in the first place; that whilst the bizarre, roaring sounds HEALTH make may sound unhinged, as a unit they are incredibly tight, handling labyrinthine, polyrhythmic beats and guitars that sound like a jet engine playing a harmonica, at breakneck pace, without ever slipping out of time. Loops upon loops of feedback and zoothorned vocals pile on top of each other and coalesce into a dense, pulsing throb.

The crowd are certainly in a mood to move their feet. Heads and arms flail everywhere as the front five rows bounce and writhe with the noise. Up on stage, this unleashed energy is reflected by the band, who tear into each song, giving every last ounce of themselves to the performance. They speak only once in the whole hour they are on stage – “Hi, we’re HEALTH, we’re from Los Angeles. Thanks for coming out tonight. This is our last song.” – before exiting on the frenzied, minute-long ‘Courtship’. A drumbeat, a scream, some mutilated vocals and the spectacle is finished, and all that is left are the hundred or so reeling audience members, trying (and failing) to put into words what they have just witnessed.

Strengthening Resolve

As the new year is almost upon us, I thought I'd join the countless swathes of writers contributing their own unoriginal twopenceworth to the already bulging sack of articles about the yearly irritant of new year's resolutions. God, but I'm so fucking original.

The main problem with doing these things on New Year's is that it's the worst possible timeframe to attempt it in. You've just had your post-christmas break from alcoholism and gluttony, and are just gagging to start the cycle again. Then you go out and it's advisable, if not compulsory, to drink your own weight in booze (especially as you've built up such a tolerance during the winter months, when there's nothing else to do). For the next week, you're experiencing the hangover and can hardly motivate yourself to stand up, let alone go jogging, and even if you could get out of the door, it's just too cold. This is why people always look healthier during the summer months. Aside from ceasing to look pasty and malnourished, and being able to leave the house without being dressed up to resemble a sock stuffed with fabric, it's the only time of year when it's logistically possible to actually do anything healthy. Going to the park to kick a ball around becomes a pleasure rather than insanity. You start happily eating salads instead of condensed chunks of fat. And you do all this without the pressure of some ill-conceived yearly self-betterment programme.

My own resolutions are far from high definition (YES! A technology pun!). I'm constantly resolving to do things, not just at those moments when, due to some arbitrary fluke of calendar making in the distant past, we all get to watch the numbers click round to zero again and go "aaah". I've already resolved about four times on this very blog to post more, only to be scuppered by my own absentmindedness, lack of organisation and short attention span (DAMN you, facebook tetris! Why can I not just let anyone else have a higher score than me?)

My other regular resolution is to exercise more, not in the gym, which as a proud and self confessed skinny emo streak of piss I hold a moral objection to, but just by jogging or swimming enough that I don't have a near heart attack every time that I need to run for the bus. Trouble is, there just aren't enough hours in the day for something that I so loathe doing. How do these people who work out regularly manage it? Unless they actually enjoy the gym experience, which I can't even begin to believe. Even when you remove the factor of trying to exercise in skinny jeans and eyeliner without everyone around you laughing themselves into an epileptic fit, you're still left with the sheer humiliating drudgery of it all. It somehow manages to combine mind-numbing boredom with intense physical discomfort, all the while asking you to pay for the experience, rather like purchasing a membership to the museum of R&B, knitwear and vegan cooking, where for a nominal fee the staff will hold your arms apart and take turns beating you around the torso with wet sacks of cement, but you can't shut your eyes because they're stapled open like that scene in A Clockwork Orange, forced to watch an endless parade of chunky sweaters and deep-fried haloumi, the warblings of R. Kelly only drowned out by the screeching of the curators as they laugh themselves silly at your discomfort, crying with laughter, for two hours, laughing, laughing, laughing.

Gosh, that was a long sentence. Excuse me while I lie down and catch my breath.

Anyway, that's why this year I'm resolving not to make any resolutions (and paradoxes be damned). You see, I'm much more content to be a disorganised whirlwind of poor decision making and occasional laughable attempts to better myself than some sanitised, asinine model of the perfect human being. Flaws and failures are a good thing, they make it all the better when you somehow manage to do things right for a change. So join me, ye huddled masses yearning to break free from the tyranny of health club membership. Drink, smoke and abuse your body to your heart's content (no overeating, though, if there's one thing I can't stand it's fat people). I think I'll start right now. There's a bottle of rum left over from christmas downstairs, it should do the trick.