It seems like the further away from disco we get, the better the music from that era sounds. Granted, I wasn’t there for it, so I didn’t experience it firsthand. Perhaps I’d feel differently about the genre had I been forced to listen to it daily on Top 40 radio. But I’ve never especially hated disco music. The Saturday Night Fever soundtrack was released in 1977 – the same year as Hotel California and Rumours – and it would become the record that legitimized disco as a commercially viable style of music. Hell, given a choice between Saturday Night Fever and Boston’s self-titled debut, I’d take the damn disco any day. For me, the further I get from music that was shitty to begin with (“More Than A Feeling,” “Peace Of Mind”), the shittier it sounds, the more bland and dated. But disco, although dated, wasn’t trash; people just thought it was at the time. We know retrospectively that the Bee Gees were geniuses and we also know that disco laid the foundation for modern dance music and culture.

Rock critics everywhere are cautiously avoiding boiling Hercules And Love Affair’s self-titled debut album down to “genre revivalism.” Fair enough. If you accuse the New York-based dance outfit of simply releasing a record of mimicry and nothing more, then you’ve also missed how articulate and smart Hercules And Love Affair really is. But the fact that critics are making it a point to mention that they’re not reducing the album to nostalgic masturbation doesn’t mean that it isn’t. It is. And that’s okay. This is a tremendously exciting record from a tremendously exciting group of New York-based DJs and disco-ducks. It’s alright to call it genre revivalism because it is, but it’s smart revivalism. Hercules And Love Affair is a fascinating disco record and all the hype and the five-star reviews are well deserved.

With accomplished New York DJ Andy Butler as their commander-in-chief, the group is an orgy of talent. Antony Hegarty of Antony And The Johnsons lends his bizarre – and gorgeous – pipes to half of the album’s tracks, making songs like “Time Will” and “Blind” not only the best songs on the record, but also some of the best songs of the year. Lead vocals are shared with a band member listed as simply Nomi, who spices up other album highlights like “Hercules Theme” and “You Belong” with her delicious singing. A third vocalist, Kim Ann Foxman, strikes a nice, subdued contrast with her work on “Athene,” “Iris,” and “True False/Fake Real.” The front half of the disc is funked-up, spazzed-out, neo-disco perfection. Each song begs the listener to make it number one. The second half is the slower, stranger, spookier (less impressive) half of the album, but slow-burners like “Iris” and “Easy” sort of round-out the record and showcase Hercules And Love Affair’s ingenuity and electro smarts.

It would be unfair to reduce this album to nothing more than nostalgia, because that would indeed ignore the quality and substance of the record and also how well they explore nostalgia. But beyond that, a reduction of that sort ignores the fact that Hercules And Love Affair are brimming with versatile and contrasting talent. They’ve brilliantly mashed up thirty years of dance music history onto one record – disco, new-wave, synth-pop, house, electronic – and so not only have they revived these dance genres, they’ve practically reinvented them. Hercules And Love Affair is a phenomenally appealing record and a must-buy for anyone interested in hearing how best to pay homage to our pop-music ancestors. I can’t recommend this album enough. 

Rating: A-

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