I was having a tough time trying to figure out what to post this week (thus the late post), until I got my hands on the self title album by Hercules and Love Affair last night. At first I was worried, due to someone labeling this a “experimental,” which lead me to think it would be along the same ambient, disappointing lines as Deerhunter and The Field. But, after considering it for a moment, I though, what the hell does “experimental” even mean, when it comes to anything creative? …And this is why I sometimes really dislike genres. If pushed, I would say “Hercules and Love Affair” is dance-jazz-pop. Full of energy, Hercules and Love Affair has made a great, great album, I highly recommend!
Rating: 9.1
Forget disco for a second. The most significant thing about the debut album from New York’s Hercules and Love Affair has less to do with revival than arrival– that of a compelling new voice in American dance music. Not Antony Hegarty’s, of Antony and the Johnsons, even though his pipes are an integral part of Hercules’ aesthetic, but Andrew Butler, a twentysomething resident of New York who has made one of 2008’s great albums, and one of the best longplayers from DFA. (DFA’s Tim Goldsworthy surely deserves some of the credit as well, as the album’s co-producer and the programmer behind most of the record’s beats.) Butler got his start writing music for art projects in college– “like a remake of Gino Soccio’s ‘Runaway’ done in the style of Kraftwerk,” he told Fact magazine– but Hercules and Love Affair’s music doesn’t require Fischerspooner-type theatrics. This debut album is a self-contained, self-assured, 10-song set that runs vintage styles through a restless compositional imagination to create something joyfully, startlingly unique.
Quoted from Pitchfork. Check out Hercules and Love Affair’s site.