After extensive touring and a bit of schooling, the Harlem Shakes got together with Chris Zane (The Walkmen, Passion Pit) to record their first full-length album, Technicolor Health. The result is one of the most quietly ambitious pop albums in ages. Much like Blur fused English pop traditions and contemporary sonics to forge Brit Pop, Harlem Shakes meld the Great American Songbook with unmistakably contemporary textures, creating what one might call "AM Pop." Technicolor Health invokes the synthesized Latin percussion that plays outside the band's apartments every night, and the classic rock radio they listen to with unabashed regularity. These are social songs: instruments meander, trade off lines, and counter each others rhythms and melodies, but ultimately they come together again on the chorus, or in an ecstatic outro or bridge, for a singalong family dinner. The record captures the weary, hopeful, and sometimes triumphal vibe of a dark period in their lives. Technicolor Health is about surviving abject shittiness. "This will be a better year," indeed.