From the Garage to the Dance Floor
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The new albums from New York bands Love as Laughter and Hercules and Love Affair rekindle memories of beloved genres before niche-marketing and trend-setting Web logs got ahold of them. Brooklyn’s Love as Laughter, the long-running pop-rock band led by Sam Jayne, continues its winning streak of catchy, guiltless indie-rock with “Holy” (Glacial Pace), though in this case the “indie” isn’t merely a descriptive word for feckless guitar strums and fey vocals. Hercules and Love Affair, meanwhile, pulls off an even greater coup with its self-titled debut (DFA Records/Mute), on which the producer-DJ Andy Butler and his cast of vocalists sincerely resurrect the halcyon days of disco without irony, crafting one of the most instantly affecting pop albums in recent memory. Both albums are out today.
Mr. Jayne has been churning out consistently rewarding music for more than a decade, but Mr. Butler and Hercules and Love Affair practically came out of nowhere when their debut was released in Britain this past March. A 10-song capsule of unfettered joy, bittersweet memories, and the sort of enveloping sadness best overcome by listening to favorite records all night long, “Hercules and Love Affair” dusts off the easygoing percussions, swooning vocals, and dance floor-ready grooves of disco and early house music. Mr. Butler, however, doesn’t favor the disco of Giorgio Moroder’s synthesized beat packages or, worse, the mainstream disco pop of the Bee Gees and K.C. and the Sunshine Band. He knows that disco and house music bubbled out of dance clubs as DJs reinvented soul and R&B records for all-night parties, and the genre’s beat palette and ideas for song structure are much broader than any software preset can offer.
The combination of finger snaps, mournful bass beats, and background keyboards set the early mood and sculpt the album’s opening track, “Time Will.” The instrumentation never swirls into a drowning morass, favoring instead the intimacy of a low-key melody and emotional restraint. Over the next 46 minutes and change, Mr. Butler works such subtle magic again and again: A Brazilian party rhythm folds into a shy keyboard line on “You Belong”; a new-wave synthesizer bass line flowers into a house-music anthem on “This Is My Love”; squishy drums and puddle-splash bass are spiked with a laser tone in the lovely ballad “Iris,” and the textural, rustling-leaves percussion of “Easy” finds Mr. Butler turning a piece of ephemeral ambient music into an emotional bouquet.
What’s even more impressive about “Hercules and Love Affair” is how seamlessly it works as an album despite its rotating cast of vocalists. Three singers — Antony Hegarty (of Antony and the Johnsons), Nomi Ruiz, and Kim Ann Foxman — share the duty of bringing Mr. Butler’s lyrics to life, and they each bring something different to the music. Ms. Ruiz strikes the tone of a traditional soulful diva on “You Belong,” her rich presence immediately setting up a bedroom mood. Ms. Foxman’s earthy voice sounds the most ill-suited for disco, but she sings with such a world-weary attitude that it nicely complements the music’s resigned joy. And Mr. Hegarty’s presence is something of a marvel — his arresting, melancholic croon atop the late-night party of “Blind” and the icy chill of “Time Will” creates an operatic melodrama.
Credit Mr. Butler’s songwriting for holding everything so gently but soulfully together. The disco vibe of “Hercules and Love Affair” is strong, so it may date quickly as a dance album. But right now it’s difficult to imagine another pop album so winningly and hauntingly blending happiness and sadness in such an instantly accessible document.
* * *
Mr. Jayne’s sturdy songwriting has provided the anchor for Love as Laughter since the band’s debut in 1996, from the garage stomp of 2001’s “Sea to Shining Sea” to the more knowing grace of 2005’s “Laughter’s Fifth,” and he’s got plenty more stylistic quills in his songwriting quiver. For “Holy,” the band’s sixth album, Mr. Jayne unleashes yet another solid blast of pop-rock too smart for the radio but too pleasing to be ignored.
Mr. Jayne and the band — bassist Ivan Berko, drummer Zeke Howard, and guitarist Andy Macleod — competently move through his many ideas with fire and grace. Album opener “Holy” flirts with a country-rock gone paisley, and it’s indicative of how Mr. Jayne likes to blend ideas. An acoustic guitar’s folksy charm leads into a chorus of swelling bass, drums, and harmonized vocals, blithely moving from Gram Parsons to the Kinks. The leader works a similar alchemy on “Konny and Jim,” dropping an anthem-like rock ‘n’ roll guitar chug in front of twang-inflicted verses. Elsewhere, Mr. Jayne showcases an irresistible gift for Police-esque pop, such as on the trebly guitar-driven gem “All Parts of Me.”
But the best moments on “Holy” arrive when the band goes for broke in either direction. The thunderous album closer, “Bonnie and Clyde,” is a scorching, stumbling jam that finds the band riotously unfettered, with Mr. Jayne sounding like he’s the last guy still standing after drinking Tom Waits and Paul Westerberg under the table. On the quieter side, “Coconut Flakes” is a subdued ballad powered by little more than an acoustic guitar arpeggio and Mr. Jayne’s calm voice.
But it is album standout “Crosseyed Beautiful Youngunz” that spotlights Love as Laughter’s many strengths. Over a casual, loping afro-Caribbean percussion shuffle, an electric guitar line spices the melody with distorted jumbles. And over this discombobulated ease, Mr. Jayne sings a song about just getting by. It’s a lovely tune, and “Holy” itself serves as a beguiling reminder that once upon a time indie rock defined an attitude, not a sound. Granted, “Holy” is coming out on Modest Mouse frontman Isaac Brock’s Glacial Pace imprint, which is a subsidiary of Epic, but given how myopically same-sounding so much of “indie” rock has become in recent years, it needs every little bit of pith and energy it can get.