When Andy Butler imagined what he might look like as a rockstar, he saw himself as Hercules. A forlorn, lovesick, and queer Hercules, to be exact. The juxtaposition between the machismo of the Greek demigod and his pining over a male lover in one specific legend is what drew Butler toward the idea of Hercules & Love Affair; that even at its most iconic and ionised, masculinity was a visage that had come to overshadow deft human emotion. That emotion is very much at the root of his work as Hercules & Love Affair, almost as if over the scope of the project’s illustrious life, Butler has, like Hercules, been searching for love.
When the project first came to fruition nearly two decades ago, it was at the hands of Butler’s friend and frequent collaborator (some might argue Love Affair co-founder) ANOHNI. She and Butler had recorded a strange little demo some time before that, and following ANOHNI’s Mercury Prize win and rising success, she suggested Butler put out the record. Blind was an oddity for the time; not quite synthpop, nor electroclash, neither was it the sort of chic and then en mode French house of groups like Groovejet. It lay somewhere in between all these things, and ANOHNI’s voice, so full of melancholy, was a beguiling juxtaposition to Butler’s funk infused italo. Blind would ultimately become the blueprint for the Love Affair formula, and ANOHNI the unofficial voice and soul of the project. It makes sense then that on an album that rewrites that formula for the first time, Butler and ANOHNI should return to each other, bringing with them years of wisdom, lessons, and self-awareness. In Amber is that album, and at first glance it’s one that seems impossibly outside the scope of Hercules & Love Affair. But while In Amber might be distinct sonically, it continues Love Affair in theme and concept, indulging in the romanticism of it all more than what’s come before.
In Amber is not so much a dance album as we’ve come to expect from Hercules And Love Affair, and those anticipating the sort of louche and lush beats of Butler’s earlier work will be surprised. Rather, it’s a visceral and dramatic exploration into darker, dance-adjacent styles that Butler has flirted with in the past. There’s lashings of darkwave and moody post-punk in the bass stabs and aching melody of One, even more so on the grimey guitar of Christian Prayers, on which ANOHNI performs as if she’s the diva of a hair metal opera. ANOHNI’s voice is most prevalent on the album, and the tracks on which she appears are some of In Amber’s most carnal and urgent. There’s an unbridled sort of experimentation that unfolds between her and Butler, particularly on tracks like Killing His Family, which sounds like nothing else in Hercules & Love Affair’s catalogue. The song exists somewhere between Massive Attack and FKA Twigs by way of Burial; a sparse, minimal soundscape within which syncopated industrial clatters ring atop a rotondo house bass line.
Download and stream In Amber here
But there’s another voice that’s as central to In Amber aside from ANOHNI’s; Butler’s own. Perhaps for the first time in Love Affair’s history, Butler is using his voice with little discretion. Interestingly, his songs are markedly different in tone. They’re softer, a touch more romantic. The opening pulse of Grace, along with its disparate piano chords that twinkle and cascade like butterflies before falling in love, create a stunningly earnest cosmos for Butler’s gorgeously awestruck delivery. On Gates of Separation, he’s more ominous, but even when signing a dirge still dances with piano and soaring strings to deliver another of In Amber’s more sentimental moments. It’s almost as if there’s two streams of thought running parallel to each other, two different bodies of work that have been channelled into one. It risks coming off as slightly disjointed. The leap from ANOHNI’s punk cabaret on Contempt for You to the emotional weight of Gates of Separation feels too distant from one another, as if listening to something on shuffle. But there’s true magic when In Amber’s streams do happen to cross successfully. The ominous, desolate Who Will Save Us is a good instance, where up until that point what has been the style of Butler’s songs crosses over to ANOHNI. Meanwhile on Repent, Butler adopts ANOHNI’s full voiced theatricality to deliver In Amber’s glorious swan song.
Exploring themes of loss and the heartbreak of othered love, In Amber tackles the same distillation of the lived queer experience, from the familial to the spiritual, that Butler’s previous work has. Applying this to a new sonic template makes for an album that is fairly heavy, with its cavernous production and thunderous percussion matched in intensity by the often weighty and reflective subject matter. In Amber can almost be argued for as a rock opera of sorts, a concept album in which each choice is made in service of the whole. From Butler, it’s an alarming pivot that doesn’t always pay off, but when it does, does so in bounds.
Listen to Killing His Family from In Amber below.
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