Staples-The Harlem Shakes' Technicolor Dreamcoat

Sometimes, you get lucky, truly and strangely lucky, and you listen to the right record at the right moment and it'll be with you forever. Granted, some records are so great that they're going to do that anyway, but not every record is Let It Bleed or Abbey Road or Blonde on Blonde, so you gotta appreciate that shit when it happens. I heard the Harlem Shakes' Technicolor Health at the best time possible. The record is hopelessly positive and forward-looking, so much so that it caused critics to wince, yet it was the best thing for me to hear at that moment. I listened to this record on repeat during a six hour drive from the Appalachians to Chapel Hill, and it became a staple of my music collection.

At its core, Technicolor Health is a fun, anthemic album that zooms from start to finish in under 40 minutes. And while it's not on the level of the Stones or the Beatles or Dylan, it's a damn fine indie rock/pop record with at least three defining songs, whereas most records struggle to find one. We'll start from the beginning. I'm a fan of strong opening tracks, and this record surely has one. "Nothing but Change Part II" reminds me of that brilliant guitar-based indie rock that Ted Leo perfected at times. The song also serves as an opening salvo on the theme: one of (obviously) change. The singer is funny and self-depricating ("I wanna sing you a song so plain / that you'll go un-half insane") but also relentlessly forward-looking ("Still I feel that there are changes coming soon / nothing but change"). The chorus is a glorious cymbal and hand-clap filled mess as the whole band chimes in to create a sort of shambolic beauty.



The second song on Technicolor Health, "Strictly Game," does not let the pace slow for a second. Singer Lexy Benaim encapsulates that strange indie-hipster movement towards artisinal farming in four lines: "Up from the basement to my best friend's farm / we'll work so hard we can do no harm / we'll till the lands and duck our debts / underneath soft sun chewing nicorette." And while that paints a clear picture, the best part is the chorus: "Make a little money / take a lot of shit / feel real bad / and get over it / oh, this will be a better year." Damn if that hasn't been true about pretty much every single year for the past ten. "Strictly Game" is the indie rock "Like a Rolling Stone," a reminder that despite a fall from grace, the next year will be a better one (and do watch the video below, it's inspired).



The most anthemic of the first three songs, though, is probably the third, "TFO." While Benaim's vocals feel restrained on the first two songs, he really lets his voice come through on "TFO," nearly screaming "Reel in / your feelings / we got time to waste some time / we got time to waste some time now." Again, the guitar here sounds like some of Ted Leo's best work, though it also drew comparisons to the Walkmen, the Shins, and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. I can't find a link to the studio version of the song, and the live versions lack sound quality, so you're going to have to buy the record.



Strangely, Technicolor Health was criticized for being just another derivative Brooklyn hipster band, as Pitchfork wrote:

Anyone put off by the group's privileged nostalgia and self-consciously upbeat lyrics might imagine the cover's rainbow canopy as a multi-hued harbinger of doom, announcing yet another smug Brooklyn band with a savvy appreciation of someone's big brother's hip record collection and a smart way of appropriating and assimilating it into a catchy enough but far from guileless confection.

Man. That is some harsh criticism, and almost funny, given that it's coming from Pitchfork. Let's straighten this out. We're faulting the band for liking certain music and being from Brooklyn? When did we draw the line on which Brooklyn bands are cool and which aren't? Yes, the music is derivative (and what music isn't, I wonder?), but the important question is not whom it is derived from[1. This issue came up in an interview with CokeMachineGlow, where guitarist Todd Goldstein was asked if he thought it was unfair that they were being criticized because their influences were newer, and not, I don't know, Kraftwerk or Can or Joy Division. His response: "it’s like, well, the Arcade Fire album changed my life, I was depressed and I heard and it and it changed me. I love that album. But what really made our record sound like it did was that we are all weened (sic) on classic rock radio. We just love awesome pop songs, harmonized guitars and weird little direction shifts, stuff like that. We just want to make something that feels like that. But I guess everyone wants to make something that feels like the old stuff, but they’re listening to new stuff and being like 'this sounds awesome' too."] (and how cool they are), but is the deriviation any good? Does it bring anything new to the table? Is it worth listening to? And the answer here is, unequivocally, yes. Importantly, two years later, this record sounds just as good, if not better, and it's a damn shame that the band broke up.



Now we'll miss tracks like "Winter Water," a triumphant recollection of the beginning of a relationship: "If we are leaving / we're leaving together...If we are sleeping / we're sleeping together." Or the humor of "Niagara Falls, "I don't even know what I'm in the game for / I don't even get your t-shirt's pun." "Natural Man" recalls earlier Of Montreal (especially in the unusual but affecting vocals), when they weren't too eclectic and strange to listen to.



Technicolor Health is a puzzling title--it's a reference to the novel The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, by Michael Chabon, and ostensibly means a surging yet false/temporary sense of health and happiness. So while most of the record is naively hopeful, there's that sense that even when things do get better, they will cycle around again and tough times will begin anew. But, the record also represents the chance to come out of a depression, a tough situation, bad times, and to be able to know, to KNOW that things will get better in the future. That this will be a better year. And it takes a hell of a band and a hell of a record to be able to sing those words so truly and so convincingly. It was enough then to help allay sadness during a dark year, and it's enough now to get me through a morning filled with the inherent self-doubt of the unemployment blues.