antony hegarty

[4] Hercules And Love Affair, ‘My House’

Hercules And Love Affair

To deliver this skintight streak of acid soul, Hercules use three singers: one to, well, sing the song, one to say “Get up, get up”, the third to say “Ca-con-con”. Staggering. The last days of disco indeed.

It’s all very Fingers Inc and diva-defiant but goes to show just how fresh this kind of thing still sounds. There’s no way you can’t at least jerk your head around to ‘My House’. In a way though, it was a false start for an album that never quite catches fire like their wonderful debut; maybe that’s the absence of Antony, but I think these three singers do a fine job even with their ill-balanced burden.

Or do they? Over to Junior: “It’s a bit good. Not the singing, the instruments – they suit the singing.” I wouldn’t like to work out those royalties.

[4] Hercules And Love Affair, ‘Blind’

Hercules And Love Affair

Antony Hegarty’s a rum old cove – you think you have him pigeonholed as a massively melodramatic torch singer, the type that can ruin a good couple of tracks on a Björk album simply with his wailing presence, and then he goes and fronts up on a stunning disco track as if it were, to him, the most natural thing in the world.

Of course, ‘Blind’ is more than disco; it’s deep, deep house too, throbbing with delicious beats and perky muted horns. Hercules And Love Affair is the brainchild of mythologically-minded DJ/producer Andy Butler, but here it’s very much the Hegarty show – the lead Johnson lifting the song from the solid to the sublime.

This sort of thing is catnip to Junior who hasn’t even had her Rice Krispies yet, but is flinging herself around with gay abandon, sporting a set of penguin-shaped deely boppers. Deely boppers. You remember. You’ve seen Kate Thornton getting giddy about them on I Love 1982.