Reviewed on Monday February 8
Music is a disease with a positive purpose; a contagion with an end goal in mind. And like every other illness known to man, it uses the body as a vessel. In that way, the physical form became the star of Health’s show at Oxford Art Factory: the carrier for a very special infection and the focus of every single act.
Opening artist James Crooks sweated and sashayed his way around the stage, setting off pre-recorded beats and punctuating them with guitar barbs, occasionally sending a lone cymbal flittering about in the light. It was an interesting if vaguely slight set; enjoyable but ultimately a little airy and unsubstantial.
But from that point on, the body heat in the room increased in direct correlation with the talent on display, as Marcus Whale sent the audience into frenzied flurries of flesh, dancing his way through songs concerned with subjects as diverse as ‘Invasion Day’ and the struggles of “the queer [experience] in a hostile environment”, to quote Whale’s own onstage banter. It was heady yet primal stuff; at once danceable and yet supremely intelligent and haunted.
Health staked claim in the same territory, but violently, with less subtext and more aggression; side-stepping political concerns and selecting as their domain the territory of physical human experience. Everything was felt and nothing was imagined – it was a show that incited movement, fluidity and heat, and it abandoned everything to do with the mind, aiming itself squarely at the gut.
Death Magic, the band’s tremendous recent album, provided the bulk of the setlist, with ‘Stonefist’ proving to be a particularly throbbing standout. But in truth, the entire back catalogue was taken care of, and with each tune the band tore through the boundaries of the stage, seemingly getting closer to every single audience member without ever moving an inch into the moshpit.
It was a strangely moving affair too, with the audience flinching and muttering after every protracted drum solo, becoming increasingly connected to the music. Tendrils extended from the stage; tissue formed and solidified, and backlit by some of the most glaring strobe lights imaginable, the band transformed from personalities into signifiers. Their faces were blurred, they sang more than they spoke, and they were reduced to simple bodies; swathes of muscle and flesh. Or no, not reduced. Elevated.
