The Singles Jukebox

They’re quite good live…

[Video][MySpace]
[5.20]

Mallory O’Donnell: WOW NO DUDE THE THING THAT IS TOTALLY LACKING ABOUT 1998 IS THAT WE HAVEN’T GONE ALREADY BACK YET AND RE-SHOT 1998 FOR HD TECHNOLOGY I MEAN THINK ABOUT IT, LIKE IF WE WERE TO DO 1998 ALL OVER AGAIN BUT DO IT, LIKE, RIGHT THIS TIME WITH ALL FILTERS ON CHICKS SO THEY LOOK ALL SHADOWY AND VAMPIRICAL AND THIS TIME, I MEAN MAKE IT LIKE AGGRESSIVE AND EDGY BUT WITH TODAYS SCIENCE AND DRIPPINGS OF BLOOD AND HAVE IT JUST LIKE TOTALLY RIP OH MAN, OH THAT WOULD BE SO SWEEET
[2]

Dan MacRae: The blueprint for this was likely comprised of the words “sexual menace” in big block letters. This, however, resembles a freezer-burnt leftover from the Spawn soundtrack.
[3]

John Seroff: I have a grudging respect for anyone who pulls off mopey and raucous simultaneously, and HEALTH’s combination of sighing shoegaze vocals and jangling, effects-driven guitar thrashing does the trick. Multiple listenings opened this up nicely; what started out sounding like a bad outtake from The Crow II OST blossomed into an angrier, choppier (and yeah, weaker) update of The Smiths’ “How Soon Is Now”. Beguiling.
[7]

Alex Wisgard: HEALTH are a band I’ve read about more than I’ve heard, their abrasively colourful album sleeves frequently adorning record shop walls and t-shirts alike. Its quasi-industrial production is too dreamy to be agressive, and the song itself is too inconsequential to stick — the sound of the Cocteau Twins playing a comeback gig in the middle of a factory floor.
[5]

Michaelangelo Matos: If I’ve heard HEALTH before this it’s by accident, but whatever I was expecting, straight up ’92 shoegaze wasn’t it. And as someone who was paying attention to the ’90s alt-rock radio swell, I approve. I’m sure that makes me unreliable in some way, but I still like it.
[7]

Chuck Eddy: The album works as tolerable background clatter largely because these guys get a machine-like rumble going that most pencil-necked indie geeks are too rhythmically inept to even attempt; “Nice Girls,” for instance, is built on an oil-can drum ritual Killing Joke might not scoff at. And lots of the rest (including the opening of “Die Slow”) pleasantly dumbs down the kind of bombastic Apocalypse Now kitsch that Sonic Youth trafficked in back in their Glen Branca protegé days. The problem, surprise surprise, is the singing, so blurry and vague that I have no idea why Health even bothered having any — easy enough to tune out in Muzak mode, but impossible not to get irked by when listening close. I will never understand an aesthetic so deluded to believe that vocals this bloodless could make such noise better, in any conceivable way. In “Die Slow,” the vacant nasal-inhaler wheeze atop all but negates any friction from the Sly Foxy factory clank below.
[6]

Ian Mathers: As atmosphere this is perfectly fine – drifty female vocals that might as well be wordless, phased guitar(?) stutters, a solid beat. But it sounds like the introduction to something more interesting (or at least more forthright) or maybe the kind of music that gets played a goth club in a bad action movie instead of anything more authentic or exciting.
[4]

Frank Kogan: Zeppelin-sized beat is run through a meat grinder; meanwhile a depressed, affectless dead person fails at even being ghostly. The whole thing frustrates my attempt to give it a really bad grade, however, when the dead person manages to inhabit a melody and the music finally rocks along with the beat.
[6]

Martin Kavka: I can’t say that this is a song I will listen to often, or even once more. But while it’s playing, it suffuses my entire being. Every decision — ramping up the dissonances to differentiate this from more typical industrial fare, mixing the lyric deep in the mix, doing a video that makes a powerful statement about the risks and rewards of an ethos in which life/blood is one’s highest value — is carefully and intelligently thought out.
[8]

Chris Boeckmann: Well, short answer: I don’t think this works. But I do feel like, underneath all the generic, frantic electrojunk instrumentation, there’s a pretty melody begging for breathing room.
[4]