About a year after the hipsters were onto it, I finally downloaded Hercules & Love Affair's album (of the same name.) Short review: great album.
The most striking aspect of it for me is that I love the vocals. Why is this striking? Because the main vocalist is Antony Hagerty of Antony and the Johnsons, who released a critically acclaimed album, I Am A Bird Now, which I haven't been able to get myself to listen to. I just can't take Antony's voice — too much vibrato, too plummy, too over-emoting for me.
Or so I thought. Because in the hands of Andy Butler, Antony sounds phenomenal. Butler said in an interview that he wrote "Blind" for him because he "just wanted to hear Antony's voice against an electronic texture". To say this was a good call is an understatement. It's the counterbalance to all that rich emotive power. It's what made countless 80s bands like the Eurythmics work too.
Same singer, different band, what a difference. Reminds me of when Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty was a guest vocalist on Carlos Santana's hit song "Smooth." In my not-so-humble opinion, Matchbox Twenty was vile beyond belief, and Rob Thomas was responsible for most of the evil in the world. Bad, bad music. But "Smooth"? Smooth! Ten years later, that song still holds up quite nicely. (The same cannot be said either of Matchbox Twenty's albums or Rob Thomas' solo output.)
Some singers manage to be brilliant no matter where they are. But sometimes, maybe what a singer needs is to go someplace else and sing somebody else's material for a change.
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