ORIGINAL RELEASE DATE: JANUARY 31ST 2011
1YRON’S TOP 52 RECORDS OF 2011 RANKING: #48


Anyone who fell in love with Hercules and Love Affair’s self-titled debut in 2008 may have found it difficult to accept the marked difference of its more thoughtful follow-up Blue Songs. Hercules And Love Affair was one of the year’s boldest endeavors and mined classic 70’s disco along with flashes of early house, floorfiller after floorfiller, from the single of the year Blind, to the smooth grooves of Athene and back again to the blissful This Is My Love. Hercules And Love Affair had it all, and its charm came in droves. The obvious difference between it and Blue Songs is that the former was more a band’s album, a collection of songs that felt truly wholesome and designed exclusively for your pleasure. Blue Songs, on the other hand, has lost Anthony Hegarty, who like it or not became the voice of Hercules And Love Affair and its broad, cross-genre appeal. It is primarily a producer’s album, concerned with drawing on the Chicago House scene circa 1987. This is all fair and well, and there’s a lot of great material to explore here, but the charm of their debut’s excess and indulgence is gone.


Blue Songs begins with an almost deceptive nod to its predecessor, but Painted Eyes is about as nostalgic as its own self-involvement will allow. A heavy club banger, it opens with flutes and introduces a majestic string section which lifts it up to Blind-heights with vocals just as melodramatic. From there it floats onward and provides a brilliant reminder of what Blue Songs could have been. My House is the clearest example of what this record sets out to achieve, which is a fully embodied homage to late 80’s house music and takes a big risk in reviving the cat calls of Technotronic’s Get Up! (Before The Night Is Over) to masterful effect. Andy Butler is Hercules’ frontman and visionary and one feels that he’s more at home recreating a retro-pastiche through Blue Songs’ eleven tracks, aware of the fact that they don’t necessarily gel together as well but concerned with evoking a sound which dominated his youth, and enjoying himself all the more for it. The Grace Jones-slick of Answers Come In Dreams ropes in the Venezulean-born, Berlin-based Aérea Negrot who provides much needed oomph to the record. Her contribution is felt throughout, perhaps most vitally on the demanding Visitor. With a beat that drives again like Jones’ Demolition Man and an iron-pumping bassline, Negrot suggests “it’s time to jump!” In contrast to her debut album Arabxilla, her contributions feel positively commercial. Hercules veteran Kim-Ann Foxman makes a much welcome return on the digitized dazzle of Leonora and further flexes her vocal prowess on the fantastic I Can’t Wait, but her presence doesn’t quite define the record so much as move it along.


Blue Songs falters in the middle on two tracks which serve as the basis for its primary theme. Boy Blue and Blue Song are an attempt to add a different kind of gravitas to the Hercules cannon, but halfway through it’s easy to forget exactly who you’re listening to. On their own, they’re very pleasant and in no way detract from the record’s highlights, feeling very much like the Iris/Easy combo which served to protract the heady disco of their masterful debut. It’s just that Butler really excels at four-to-the-floor disco rejuvenation, and it’s sorely missed on even two tracks that shun it.


Luckily things pick up again with the drop-swoops of Falling whilst Step Up ropes in Bloc Party’s Kele Okereke as he claims, “Baby, you might just be like this.” It’s lyrics like these that allow Hercules and Love Affair to wear their hearts on their sleeves and come off meaning every word. Blue Songs is full of stories about self-empowerment and sexual awakening. As such, it’s a theme that the likes of Negrot, Foxman, Okereke and Butler all have in common, so their subject matter is always authentic as well as a basis of pure indulgence for the listener. Hercules And Love Affair was a much more bittersweet journey while this record is more concerned with the underground celebration of house music around the time it infiltrated the mainstream. It’s unfortunate that Blue Songs has all been forgotten about in the year since its release. In hindsight, one suspects the absence of Tim Goldsworthy may be a major contributing factor in Blue Songs’ muted critical reception. Indeed, the music isn’t as urgent as before, but on a production level this record is way beyond the level at which most DJs and producers are operating and well worth your time as a result.