Hercules & Love Affair (Trust)
The Mod Club. Monday, July 26, 2010.
A strange sort of show for me to head out for on a Monday night — or at all, maybe. I am, after all, not a noted go-out-to-dance sort. But I do have this sort of informal guideline that maybe one out of every fifty shows I go to should be, like, body music instead of, y'know, all that chin-stroking stuff. Just to give me a reminder of some certain basic elemental things that I tend to lose sight of all too easily. And it helps when it's dance-centred music that I can appreciate on a pop level.
The early arrivers on hand as I entered the room skewed older — inneresting, as I had no idea who the crowd for this was going to be. Unsurprisingly, though, the older/mellow/early crowd would be supplemented by the younger/fabulous/fashionably late types as the night went on. There were couples of all descriptions, and if you were going to pick one label to describe the crowd it might be Vazaleen-esque.
Tapped to open things up were locals Trust, playing with a 50% larger lineup than when I saw them at NXNE, with core duo Robert Alfons and Maya Postepski joined by Susan Gale on extra percussion and keyb work. Their gear was pushed right to the front of the stage, with the headliner's giant-sized DJ table behind them, probably putting the band a bit closer to the crowd than they'd be of their own volition. Trust's natural habitat would likely be further back, and if there were dim lights and a bank of fog machines to add some murk to the surroundings, I bet they'd be cool with that as well. But even if their music has a darker undertone (and less need for the Mod Club's potentially-blinding lightshow) than the evening's headliners, this was a good pick for the support slot, getting the band out in front of a crowd eager for something to dance to.
At the start, there were just a few enthusiasts and friends up front, but the band grabbed the crowd's attention. The front of the floor quickly filled up, though people weren't yet dancing quite as much as you might expect, even with the propulsive beats (Postepski's live drums augmenting the rhythm tracks) and the heavy shaking bass that the room's sound system was built for.
Having the third member on stage freed Alfons from his keyboard and allowed him to focus on singing. That doesn't mean he was leaping around or anything — brooding intensity was more his style. Postepski, meanwhile, couldn't hide an ebullient smile while she bobbed across the stage from her drum kit to play the keybs. Still, the stage demeanour overall echoed the music's icy edge, with not even a smidge of banter coming from the band.
Once again, I was impressed with Trust. Even moreso, in fact, with the band showing some rapid development in the short time since I'd seen 'em last.
Listen to a track from this set here.
Meanwhile, as Trust's gear was cleared away and that big table of DJ gear was moved up the floor continued to fill with people eager for Hercules & Love Affair. This would arguably be more of a show for fans, untied to the promotion of a still-gestating new album (the forthcoming Blue Songs, due at the end of January). Eventually, the crew hit the stage about twenty to midnight, band founder Andy Butler leading with a heartfelt appreciation for Toronto and a dedication ("tonight we're gonna dance for Will!") to late DJ Will Munro, whose let's-all-have-fun-together inclusive queer aesthetic was a perfect match for a band like H&LA. With a statement of place and purpose, the set's first song chanted "G-A-Y! N-Y-C!" and the crowd howled and started dancing along.
There was a lot of new material in the long mix-style segments of the set, starting with a twenty-five minute suite focusing on some of the band's hookiest pop material, like the new "Falling", a disco-fied retelling of the Theseus story ("I'm Falling / and I'm Free") that left a strong impression. There was some more familiar material from the first album in there, too, like a tasty "Athene", before the first salvo closed with "Raise Me Up". Which did.
And then a break to introduce the band, now with three vocalists up front — recent addition Aerea Negrot joining Kim Ann Foxman and Shaun Wright. Keeping things moving, they mostly kept attention away from Butler and Mark Pistel on the mix behind them. The second segment led off with "Wonder Woman" 1, followed by "Painted Eyes" ("how do you make forever?/ how do you know always?") which had a ripping electric piano line and disco strings. But those would just be the warm up for the "get nasty" part of the show, with the beats taking more precedence and songs stretching out. Revealing some careful setlist construction, the songs in this lap were less pop-oriented, revolving around more straightforward chants and stripped-down lyrics — one mostly just asked "do you want me?" and another simply informed us "it's time to jump". By this time, the venue was so hot and sweaty, filled with moving bodies bouncing off each other, that more complicated sentiments weren't necessary.
And then the most energized straightforward rompers eased off into stuff like "My House" — the sort of song that would have had a vocal contribution from Antony on the first album, but here well-handled by Shaun Wright. In fact, that segued into first album standout "Blind", with Wright again handling what had originally been Anothy's part. The set ended with "You Belong", which uses that classic trick of combining a radiant disco vibe with a lyric that isn't as upbeat as it might at first appear. The song isn't generically saying "you belong" — the chorus is in fact lamenting "you belong to him tonight". And continuing the thread of disco classicism, coming back for an encore, Butler made another dedication to Will Munro, noting, "I'm sure Will had this record in his collection" as the band launched into a cover of Ganymed's "It Takes Me Higher".2
All told, the band was on for nearly ninety minutes, and I felt pretty exhausted afterward. A rewarding show that exceeded my expectations. I'd appreciated H&LA's album as a pop artifact more than as a source of danciness, but here, not only was the dance imperative foregrounded and given urgency, it was impressive to see how this totally succeeded as a live enterprise, something that dance-oriented units can't always pull off.
Listen to a track from this set here.
1 I've found this one ("Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Mars / Where do I come from?") identified as such online, though it doesn't appear to be slated for the new album, so I'm unsure of its provenance.
2 I admittedly had to do some digging to figure out this one, but the original is rather worth hearing.
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