‘[Everyone’s] listening to more music than ever, but they’re not actually listening’ — HEALTH rail against disposable music
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When HEALTH released their self-titled debut in mid-2007, they didn’t expect it to catch on the way it did. Quickly appearing in the music press and a number of blogs, the disc ended up on more than a few best-of-2007 lists. The acclaim is surprising. HEALTH is noisy, chaotic and thunderous, and, on first listen, lacks the hooks that defined many of the other discs on critics’ lists. After a second spin, though, HEALTH starts to reveal its own share of catchy hooks and rhythms layered within the cacophony. You’re forced to go back and listen a third time.
The members of HEALTH pride themselves on creating a record that demands repeat listening. John Famiglietti is up in arms with the way music has become a product for mass consumption. “A lot of music seems to be practically dead the way we are relating to it,” he says. “We end up reading a lot of reviews of our album or our friends’ releases, and it really doesn't sound like the person has listened to the album the whole way through. Everyone seems to be listening to more music than ever, but they're not actually listening for shit. I think that it's just because it's all so disposable.”
While Famiglietti wants to get people to listen more critically to the music they consume, he has no desire for listening to become work. Rather, he wants fans to listen closer and become more intimate with the music they enjoy.
“I think you really value the music so much more, and it isn't so disposable when you actually pay for it and sit down and listen to it,” Famiglietti continues. “That said, all of us have iPods, we're on fucking blogs everyday; we totally embrace the new music world. But we're feeling it too — we're not connected to music the same way anymore now that we've converted. Your attention span gets shorter, the music is disposable, you're changing the song every two fucking seconds. It's not the same, and when you buy records and sit down with them, you have a much more invested relationship with them.”
This is part of the reason HEALTH has decided to release their full-length in both vinyl and cassette formats, forcing a more thorough listen since it’s harder to skip through tracks. Famiglietti says he’s noticed a lot of fans picking up these formats “as a keepsake alongside the digital version they’ve already got on their iPods.” While those digital tracks have helped the band gain exposure, Famiglietti is always glad to see people look beyond the handful of tracks available on the band’s MySpace page.
“Getting the recognition we get is purely because of the Internet and the way things are digested now,” he says, “so we can't hate on it, because we're so much of a product of it. That being said, it’s weird having people show up for the show only knowing the couple of tracks posted on our MySpace, as that’s such a small part of the sound we create. I mean, when people come to the shows, they seem to enjoy it the same, but a lot of them were expecting something very, very different when they came.”
The band’s live show is garnering attention with its loud washes of feedback, squawky riffs and tribal rhythms that are almost danceable. The reviews all have one thing in common, though: they have a hard time fitting the sound of HEALTH into one genre. It’s noise, it’s rock, it’s electronic, it’s pulsing, it’s droney — and at the same time, it’s none of these things.
“That's the way we think music is now,” Famiglietti explains. “You can't just be a fan of one genre, because there isn't enough good stuff in one genre to facilitate your lifestyle and there isn’t a fashion associated with it anymore. You know, punk is fucking dead, and if you're only into one band you're a fucking joke — your parents did that. The new kids who are cool are into a lot of stuff. That's the new culture of music, and I think that’s why it’s a good time for us to be making the music we make.”
