Thursday, June 26, 2008 | midnight
Contrary to the mounting buzz, Hercules and Love Affair is not reinventing anything. Sure, the advancement of technology affords bleeps and blips that Jamie Principle couldn’t have imagined, but this self-titled debut is straight-up authentic disco. Hercules and Love Affair is imbuing such classicism with the affectations of the aughts.
Mainstream music appropriated disco in the ’80s and swathed it in the gauzy veil of cheerfully roller-skating heteros. But club kid-cum-DJ/producer Andrew Butler has assembled a pansexual crew of performers—including radical gay performance artist Antony (of and the Johnsons)—and with this showing, they are allowing the “dregs” of disco to breathe. In a way, this unapologetic second coming is more important than the music itself.
That said, this album is impressively self-aware. In an era of proud pill-popping and exhibitionism, Hercules and Love Affair is reawakening the original era, demonstrating what disco must have sounded like without all the sheaths and shame. “Hercules Theme” is impossibly danceable, with electronic strings, horns and jawing yeah yeah yeahs; “You Belong” brings dubs and chants that are classic Giorgio Moroder; and first single “Blind” lends tearful emotion to a genre that was notoriously glassy-eyed. This isn’t nu-disco; this is true disco. Now get up on the dance floor.
The bottom line: ****
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