Harlem Shakes Box Score

Its not often you can find an album that is overly energetic and enthusiastic and still want to listen to it without being completely annoyed. Technicolor Health is just that album. Maybe its just me, maybe its the residue from a presidential campaign, but this year in music seems to be filled with optimism and fun. I got into this album in the spring shortly after it came out because of the attractive album art and I wasn't disappointed with what I found behind it.

Allow me to explain some of the categories.

Fun-da-mentals - The songs are not very inventive, but they are very fundamentally sound and it works for the upbeat-ness of the album. Thus, its the rudimentary nature of the songs that make them fun. This category measures how well that all works.

Appropriately Garnished - Each song has some sort of weird synth sound, guitar tone, drum beat, harmony or other eccentric addition. This category measures how well the "garnish" works with the song itself.

Melange Infused - There is a wide variety of musical styles infused into each song. The different beats and different sounds sometimes add a lot to the song and sometimes don't add as much. This measures that.

Beat-ing the Mood - This measures how well the drum beats add to the happiness of the song.

Selling the Song - Lexy Benaim has a unique voice and delivery. But he is committed to the songs and the lyrics. This commitment makes me believe in the songs, like he is selling them to me. This measures how well the songs are sold.

John Starks Reference - Listen closely to see if you can pick it out. It has to do with a Starks Poster. Or just Google it.

[Total Score : 826]

Dirty Projectors Box Score

This was the toughest box score to date if only for the category creating alone. So allow me to break it down a little more for you.

Longstreth's Cat - This is a play on Schrödinger's cat where the cat in the box might be dead or alive based on a random previous event. Its a weird theory that I don't fully understand (just like this album) except that the cat might be dead or alive. Longstreth's cat is taking that idea and applying it to the song. If the song represents a series of random events (which if you've listened to the album it is just that) and at the end of each song it is determined if it worked or not. This is an all or nothing score, just like the cat being dead or alive.

Gestault Songcraft - This is the idea of looking at the song as a whole and grading it as such based on how well the parts fit together. This is not an all or nothing score and is slightly different than the previous category in that way. Some of the songs have brilliant moments and in a way bring the song into a cohesive whole, or at least they start to. The song is given points based on looking at it as a whole and how the parts work together.

Brooklyn in a Blender - This is a rating of all the weirdness you might get if you took the brooklyn music scene, Brooklyn diversity and the Brooklyn Art Museum and put it in a blender. Sometimes it might come out edible/listenable with a nice range of diversity, other times it might not really capture a very diverse sample.

Wheel of Sounds - Imagine if you took the Wall Of Sound idea and put each sound on a wheel (like the one Pat Sajak has been spinning for years) and then you spun it during the song. You would get a little of one sound here and a little of another there but rarely would they all be mixed together throughout. I think thats what this album does.

Ivy League Education - Apparently Longstreth went to Yale. I couldn't tell.

[Total Score: 674]