Hercules And Love Affair - Blue Songs


There’s little doubt the real revelation of Hercules And Love Affair’s 2008 debut was Antony Hegarty. Mainman Andy Butler appeared to have tapped into Hegarty’s true metier, dropping the ruined torch singer facade to expose the dance diva beneath. Liberated by the flawless disco surroundings, Hegarty brought authority and passion to the best songs on the album, culminating in the immense ‘Blind’, a delirious slice of New York fever that moved heart, feet and mind.

Hegarty doesn’t appear here – it’s no scandal; he has his own commitments and Butler, by his own admission, was wary of taking up his time – but there are unsettling changes elsewhere. Where the first album came out on DFA, this is released on Moshi Moshi, the split taking place around the same time as founder Tim Goldsworthy’s mysterious exit from the label. Goldsworthy, in fact, had co-produced Hercules’ debut too, but the rift is total and now Austrian techno producer Patrick Pulsinger is in the chair.

Something is lost in transition, and it doesn’t take long to discover what. The name to drop this time is Kele Okereke, who brings his little boy lost wail to Step Up, an otherwise ordinary chunk of Detroit techno, but the heavy lifting throughout is shouldered by Shaun Wright. A Hercules fan, Wright fronted up at a gig and soon impressed Butler with his big-hearted voice – he’s certainly powerful, but he’s no Hegarty. It’s a question of personality; on the excellent ‘My House’ he manages to be upstaged by implausibly exciting scat-singing from auxiliary vocalists Kim Ann Foxman and Aerea Negrot. The Venezuelan Negrot has a touch of the Grace Joneses about her, and is an effectively forbidding presence on the A Certain Ratio punk-funk of ‘Answers Come In Dreams’, while Foxman shines on closer ‘It’s Alright’, the Sterling Void house classic pared back to morose piano chords and the occasional thump, oddly hitting the doom spot with its message of hope. All decent stuff, but none of these vocals really jumps out and grabs you.

The best performance is Wright’s turn on ‘Boy Blue’, where Butler’s gratitude for Sinead O’Connor’s oblique influence on his teenage development – really – plays out against muted horns and a mild take on The Who’s ‘Substitute’ riff. Wright sings with quiet strength before, halfway, stepping back into deep orbit to testify, “I’m grateful… for the words of joy.” It’s the centrepiece of a mid-album lull, where disco drums and jacking beats are set aside for Ze Records-style cocktail jazz on ‘Leonora’ and gorgeous Balearic bliss on ‘Blue Song’, but for all the loveliness, impetus is lost. It’s up to the flat, tough ‘I Can’t Wait’ to try and pick up the pace again, Foxman offering a winningly blank vocal that only enhances the acid austerity. Similar meanness enhances Negrot’s ‘Visitor’ which throbs and broods with moans straight out of Depeche Mode’s ‘Shake The Disease’, and ends up somewhere near exciting. 
 
Whether this is enough is a moot point. ‘Blue Songs’ is a good album, no argument there; it’s just a little pale next to ‘Hercules And Love Affair’. It’s harder to surprise second time around, sure, but with the perceptible shift from disco to house, and the lack of a truly distinctive voice, some of that old verve has gone too. Hamstrung by their own high standards, Hercules need to relax again.