HEALTH & Pictureplane played 2 NYC shows (MHOW pics)

photos by Amanda Hatfield, words by Andrew Sacher

HEALTH / Pictureplane @ MHOW – 11/21/15

HEALTH brought their tour to NYC over the weekend for two shows in support of this year’s great Death Magic. We caught the sold-out Music Hall of Williamsburg show on Saturday (11/21), and then they hit LPR last night (11/22).

HEALTH’s new album is their catchiest thing to date — more an industrial synthpop album than anything else — with the noise elements present but taking a huge backseat. Live that was not the case. HEALTH were seriously abrasive, making the new songs sound like a whole lot more confrontational than they do on record. They were heavy, loud, and had a sensory overload light show to top it off. I know they had some samples going, but I still kind of can’t believe how full they sounded as a three piece. I recently talked about seeing Tribulation, and how for an aggressive metal band they actually seemed like they could be on the radio. This was the opposite. With the Death Magic songs, HEALTH are one of the heaviest pop bands around.

Opening was their tourmate Pictureplane, whose new album Technomancer is a great fit with the new HEALTH stuff. I’ve often found Pictureplane to be one of NYC’s more underrated musicians, but I haven’t seen him in a while. And the last time I did was nothing like Saturday. Like his old pal Grimes had at the same venue three days earlier, he was joined on stage by two dancers (they’re called FLUCT). They were decked out in creepy facepaint, topless for most of the set, and sometimes they tangled their bodies together. He also had projections on the screen behind him that switched from news clips to freaky memes to showing phrases in all caps bold text (like “THIS IS ART, BITCH”). Also like on his new album, his voice is bolder and more upfront than ever before.

More pictures below…

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Pictureplane with FLUCT

HEALTH