| Hercules and Love Affair | ||||
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| Studio album by Hercules and Love Affair | ||||
| Released | March 10, 2008 (UK) June 24, 2008 (U.S.) |
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| Recorded | Plantain Studios, Manhattan | |||
| Genre | Disco, house | |||
| Length | 46:24 | |||
| Label | DFA Records | |||
| Producer | Andy Butler and Tim Goldsworthy | |||
| Hercules and Love Affair chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Hercules and Love Affair | ||||
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Hercules and Love Affair is the debut album by American house group Hercules and Love Affair. The album, which was released by DFA Records in the United Kingdom on March 10, 2008 and a day later in North America, was produced by Andy Butler and Tim Goldsworthy. The album was recorded at the Plantain Studios in Manhattan.[1] Andrew Raposo (of fellow DFA band Automato) and Tyler Pope (of !!!) contributed bass to the album,[2] while Antony Hegarty co-wrote and contributed vocals on some songs.
Contents |
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | [3] |
| The Guardian | [4] |
| NME | (8/10)[5] |
| Pitchfork Media | (9.1/10)[6] |
| Rockfeedback | [7] |
| The Observer | [8] |
| Twisted Ear | [9] |
| Village Voice | (favorable)[10] |
| This Is Fake DIY | [11] |
| The Times | [12] |
The album reached number thirty-one in the UK and the top twenty in Belgium and Norway.[13]
The album received an almost exclusively positive response from the critical community. Fact Magazine called it "a unique, deeply satisfying and insanely catchy piece of work."[14] Pitchfork Media's Philip Sherburne awarded the album 9.1/10, and described it as "Lush, melancholic, gregarious, generous, both precise and a little bit unhinged" before going on to proclaim "this is the most original American dance album in a long while.".[2] Pitchfork's warm reception continued by placing "Blind" as the best song of 2008,[15] and at #18 on Pitchfork's top 500 songs of the 2000s.;[16] the album itself was placed at #132 on their list of top 200 albums of the 2000s.[17]Observer critic Paul Flynn bestowed on the album similarly lavish praise, awarding it a maximum five stars, commenting that the album "concentrates on the musicality of the [disco] genre and leaves the cliches for dust," adding "it is as sweaty, raw and meaningful as the first 12-inch singles that were spun at NY lofts."[18]
Guardian critic Alexis Petridis was slightly more skeptical, finding the album's first side to be "tremendous fun," but - as a result of its being confined to genre revivalism - to possess "an air of pointlessness." However, he deemed the inclusion of Hegarty's melancholic vocals in the disco setting to be "inspired," and praised the album's "far more inventive second half [,as] its atmosphere shifts from touchy-feely warmth to queasy unease to deep melancholy, as if the authors keep being jolted from their nostalgic musical reverie by the thought of how horribly it all ended."[19]
The single "Blind" ranked at number 2 on the "10 Best Singles of 2008" list by American magazine Entertainment Weekly.[20]
Most reviewers comment on the album's musical style as an homage to or re-imagining of disco and classic house music. Fact Magazine dubbed the album's style "a pulsating, glamorous, elegiac mix of classic disco influences, live instrumentation and modernist, mind-spangling electronic production."[14] Similarly, Daily Telegraph critic Bernadette McNulty dubs the music "d-i-s-c-o in its seventies glory" into which "Butler weaves [...] fractured Chicago house beats and pulsing synths," going on to refer to the overall style of the album as "a tableau of beautiful, dysphoric disco visions."[21] The Guardian also describes the music in the same terms, commenting "it sounds like proper late-70s disco. Not the camp glitterball retro electro-pop of Kylie circa "Spinning Round", but actual underground disco, like something long-lost from the vaults of The Loft or the Paradise Garage, real 1977-78 vintage stuff."[1] However, while most focus on the obvious musical debt to disco, some critics highlight the album's eclectic range of styles, such as Eddy Lawrence, for whome the album "has dark, psychedelic moments, such as the downbeat, mildly menacing, almost Congotronic 'Easy' alongside outright funky party stuff like 'You Belong'."[22] Butler himself describes the album's musical approach thus:
I always say it's a rhythmic, artsy kind of pop music that was made with classic dance and electronic music in mind. It has a lot of vocals and is rooted in my childhood.[14]
The album's first single "Blind", co-written and featuring vocals by Antony Hegarty, was released on March 3, 2008 and reached number forty on the UK Singles Chart.[23] NME called it a "stone-cold classic," going on to describe it as "the best kind of dance record: physical and emotional, euphorically happy and deeply, irredeemably sad. It clips along weightlessly; all disco bass, trumpets and rippling synthesiser, as Antony, his voice like tears rolling down the cheeks of a beautiful 40-year-old woman, muses intoxicatingly on lost innocence and ageing." However it criticised the song "You Belong" by stating it as "essentially just an old Chicago house tune given a digital spit'n'polish."[24] The song and its video were also received well at Pitchfork Media.[25] The song has been used to open Chanel Fall/Winter 2008 fashion show.
The promotional video for the album's first single "Blind" was directed by London-based Saam,[26] who had previously produced music videos for artists such as Klaxons ("Golden Skans," "Gravity's Rainbow" and "Magick") and Lightspeed Champion ("Tell Me What it's Worth"). The video, which features actress Jamie Winstone walking through clouds of smoke, a "bacchanalian orgy tak[ing] place all around her, hearkening back to the pre-AIDS days of disco and places like the Continental Baths, where Larry Levan DJed and which advertisers promoted as recalling "the glory of ancient Rome".[25]
| Charts (2008) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Belgian Albums Chart (Flanders)[27] | 12 |
| Belgian Alternative Albums Chart (Flanders)[27] | 8 |
| French Albums Chart[13] | 144 |
| Irish Albums Chart[13] | 44 |
| Italian Albums Chart[13] | 33 |
| Norwegian Albums Chart[13] | 18 |
| Spanish Albums Chart[13] | 84 |
| Swedish Albums Chart[13] | 23 |
| UK Albums Chart[13] | 31 |
| U.S. Billboard 200[28] | 191 |
| U.S. Dance/Electronic Albums[28] | 5 |
| U.S. Top Heatseekers[28] | 7 |
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