As long as I’m going on about music, I may as well recommend the new Harlem Shakes record. I agree with everyone about the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Bromst will certainly be one of the records I remember from 2009, but right now Technicolor Health is dominating my playlist.
I’ll refrain from trying to review the damn thing myself and instead point you toward this writeup, several paragraphs of which I heartily endorse despite its basically missing the point:
Technicolor Health is some sick candy: itâs what our indie pop should sound like in 2009. It imagines a world where The OC still matters, where goddamned Kanye West is agreeably employed, and where your little brother doesnât think itâs just ok to listen to Neutral Milk Hotel that many times/isnât aware of more than half of the bands the Shakes are copping freely when theyâre not just writing sad songs about girls, which is a lot. This is indie pop. This is your lousy local band carried forward starship-like into a fizzing pop nebula and left to spin so fast and so ably that you ultimately forget the baggage and any corny adage; because Technicolor Health fundamentally sounds good and because its songs are well-crafted enough to make a lot of the African drumming and horns sound less like garnish and more like some well-earned reward for writing songs strong enough to make that shit sound sort of necessary. Technicolor Health is self-sufficient. It isnât community, it eats itself. It is every good-to-great pre-Wincing the Night Away (2007) indie pop record brought forth and actualised as the definitive good-to-great (but mostly great) indie pop record you should be hearing as spring turns into summer, 2009. The Harlem Shakes wear everybodyâs clothes really well.
The writer seems perturbed, but I don’t know why. This is what’s great about pop music — about really good pop music — it will fool you every time. Don’t be upset or confused; this is its gift, and it would be boorish to question it. If they’re doing it right, that fresh-faced young band will always sound new, they will always make your foot tap, they will always make you feel like you’re soaring. Leave genealogy to the Mormons. You’re wired for this shit. It doesn’t have to be new, it just has to be great.
