By F. Daniel Kent
4.5 stars out of 5
I’m in love with Hercules. It’s true. Hercules & Love Affair's main man, flame haired Andy Butler and his dramatic cohorts have made me want to listen to electronic dance music again. It also helps that I am convinced Mr. Butler is my future ex-husband. But, that’s another article entirely. With a deft edge cutting against popular conventions of what dance music should be, H&LA are ahead of the curve when it comes to the dance revival revolution finally making its way to the US.
Released overseas earlier this year and dropping in the US on August 15, the sophomore follow-up to the smash hit Blind – Blue Songs - is a dramatic kaleidoscope of sounds from full on disco to excited diva vocal infused house music punctuated with a renewed fury simply lacking in modern American dance music in general. Frankly, if there were more artists doing this sort of expansive work and not relying on only one sound, I might spend more time in clubs.
When H&LA play a song, it is an event. When they put on a show, it is a memory, not just another night out. The first single from the album “Painted Eyes” is the perfect opening salvo as it jumps from a drama filled funky baseline to a swaggering vanguard of violins charging down a hedonistic dance beat. Vocalist, Kim Ann Foxman’s powerhouse vocals belie her small frame and invoke equal parts Erasure’s Andy Bell and Yaz’s Alison Moyet with a touch of Depeche Mode’s Dave Gahan for good measure. Indeed, the whole of the track invokes a late 80’s pop-goth sort of flair the group merged almost seamlessly with diva vocal driven house music through a glass darkly.
Fittingly, the video for the piece is a vivid collection of visceral visuals featuring a shifting kaleidoscope of landscapes and eye motifs which swirl and transform at a whim. The end result of which looks like something that could have been imagined by David LaChapelle after drinking kool-aid mixed by Ken Kesey. To quote a friend, “Damn! I wish I had the LSD that goes with that video!” Making at least some pretense of a plot the video shows iconoclastic women in dramatic poses that invoke videos by Annie Lennox, Tori Amos and even Ray of Light era Madonna. All that completely ignores the furious hair waving of one model (whose eyes don’t seem to be painted, curiously) who for lack of a tambourine could pay tribute to Stevie Nicks’ witchy woman look modernized. There is clearly a recognition here of the new video clubs that have usurped traditional club settings. If the beat is king then the visual is queen. Together, they can rule the world. This is the way electronic pop music should look and sound.
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