It is not enough just to say that the sophomore full-length effort by Hercules And Love Affair was expected eagerly. In fact, it was expected VERY eagerly. The record that was supposed to become one of the year’s greatest dance music events arrived at the market in winter 2011 under the title Blue Songs. This American dance project’s leader Andy Butler took his time to prepare album number two. At first, he made a decision to relocate the whole band from the noisy New York to his hometown Denver where there were far less distractions for those making music. Besides, Hercules And Love Affair underwent certain line-up changes, particularly, parting with Antony Hegarty, whose voice was amongst the eponymous debut album’s best highlights. However, this in no way weakened the band’s potential as the making of Blues Songs engaged remarkable musicians, including Kele Okereke from the iconic band Bloc Party. It must have been uneasy for the musicians to resist the temptation to keep doing what they did on the debut CD, but they changed the course and proved right.
Those who have not heard Blue Songs yet may be associating Hercules And Love Affair with an act successfully reanimating the dance traditions of the seventies. Well, these people should change their views on that because the band’s new album tastes completely different. First of all, you will sense thick bass lines overwhelming the whole CD and running through almost each track like railways. The only true exception is the first song, Painted Eyes, which thank to strings reminds of the debut record by Hercules And Love Affair. After the striking dance single My House, we pass over into another music dimension. Its architecture is a complex structure of powerful rhythms going high through the thick synthesized clouds. The vocals, of course, are not presented here as much as before because there is nobody found specially to substitute Hegarty. As a result, the well-organized, albeit quite predictable, chorus-verse structure is replaced by the chaotic blocks of electronica. While track number three, Answers Come In Dreams, is a sheer surprise, when the album gets closer to its end, we expect no other music. And this is the music where Okereke fits so well, like in Step Up.
As if proving that they are capable of doing something different, Hercules And Love Affair placed into the middle of the album a couple of songs that do not match its general concept and have similar titles, Boy Blue, and Blue Song. The former is uneasy and mystique, while the latter is sad and nostalgic. None of them ignite the desire to dance. Nonetheless, the majority of the Blue Songs tracks feature electronica borrowed from the German scene of the late eighties, where motley and scattered special effects were the cornerstone. This experiment (we have to take it as an experiment against the success of the first album) is not a hundred percent effective, and effective it simply could not be. Hercules And Love Affair are too young and inexperienced to make seamless and smooth transitions from style to style. One can not be confident of the fact that the musicians will prefer to stay on this path. But you can be confident of something else. We have a group of very courageous performers who would not fear to run risk for the sake of creative search. Therefore it is not advisable to formulate predictions regarding the third record from Hercules And Love Affair. You’d better listen to what they have already made. It sure is worth it.
Hercules And Love Affair
Brass Knuckles 2008
As before on his fifth studio album Brass Knuckles which is released after numerous delays Nelly boasts his achievements in show business, financial well-being and his success with the opposite sex
