Thursday 12 June 2008

HEALTH live at Pure Groove, 10/06/08

Readers, it's been a while, but now my GCSEs are finally over. Summer's here!

HEALTH at Pure Groove, London

Seriously, Health are amazing. On tuesday I decided to skip revising and go see them play a free instore at the new Pure Groove store that's just opened up this month. I was not disappointed. The shop is literally tiny, and the band took up basically the whole of the stage with their piles and piles of crazy equipment. And as they launched into their first track 'Girl Attorney', John Famiglietti the guitarist immediately started jumping and spinning round through the crowd, and nearly whacking us in the face with his guitar. It was a half hour set of what could be described as solid noise, but as performers they are incredibly interesting to watch just to marvel at their equipment and techniques. The lead singer Jake Duzsik had two microphones, one making normal sound and the other making a shrill, high pitched scream. And despite their eagerness to do a bit of 'crazy dancing', and the slightly chaotic nature of their songs, you can see they are amazingly well-rehearsed and slick.

Usually at concerts I consider about 90% of the fun to be based on jumping around, getting very sweaty and slightly injured; but this was a lunchtime concert full of 30-somethings and vinyl. The strange thing (for me at least) was that the lack of dancing was a good thing. Most of their songs are completely chaotic and strange anyway, and with the band getting so into what they were doing it was nice to be able to just observe, if that makes sense. The volume was incredibly loud, and the songs really took on a new dimension in a live setting. They played pretty much all their album, sadly omitting 'Lost Time' and possibly a few others, but there were definitely a few new tracks I'd never heard before.

The band's UK tour finished last night, so UK readers will have to wait until august to see them again, whereas any Americans I urge you to see them on their US tour which is starting next week!