HERCULES & LOVE AFFAIR at Wrongbar, Saturday, October 4. Rating: NNNN
The ascendance of dance music to the pop mainstream has largely left out the queer voices that helped originate and shape it. So, a concert by house-pop group Hercules & Love Affair is a welcome place where the hard-fought energy of queer dance music’s past comes alive in uninhibited fashion.
Led by producer/songwriter Andy Butler, the group blew out of the gate in 2008 with the disco single Blind, and has since settled into cult-act status on this side of the Atlantic with a following heavy on LGBT and music types. Their first proper North American tour in six years (and second T.O. gig this year, after World Pride) also marks a past/future moment for the band.
Original member Nomi Ruiz is back on vocals alongside singer Richard Kennedy, who has been working with Butler in the studio recently. Neither sang on the band’s excellent Feast Of The Broken Heart album released earlier this year, but on Saturday, they exuded the right mix of flamboyance and melancholy that gave the hour-long set of booming 80s- and 90s-style jacking house beats an emotional grounding. It’s the stuff that shirtlessness is made of.
The show culminated with an effervescent and techy reworking of Blind and a resplendent cover of South Street Player’s (Who?) Keeps Changing Your Mind – two classics that connected past with present once again.
