Get Color

In today’s huge hype musical landscape, it can be near impossible for a band with a successful first album to parlay that success into a long career. Health seem ready to beat the odds. Their sophomore album Get Color starts out with a bang: huge guitar riffs, whirring electronics, and almost shoegazey, wall of sound vocals coat “In Heat,” the album’s opener, in sound from top to bottom. This is a perfect album-opener: a great song that really paves the way for the next eight.

“Die Slow,” the next song and first single from the LA noise band’s follow-up to 2007’s breakthrough self-titled album, is equally engrossing. The song combines danceable drumbeats with the band’s signature monotone, evocative vocal style to create something both contemporary and new, but not gimmicky.

“Before Tigers,” my favorite track on the album, is almost unsettling, as it builds its non-melody around an insistent, persistent drumbeat that keeps the song on track, while the purposefully vague vocals and distorted guitar effects float in and out. That a song can seem so haphazard (in the best way possible) but clearly be so perfectly structured is a real testament to the band members’ talent.

If you like your noise rock a little less, um, noisy and a little more ethereal—but in a somehow danceable way—check out Get Color. Don’t let this intensely interesting, surprisingly listenable (for noise rock, that is) album fly under your radar.

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