Send "Funeral Party " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Musicomh |
 Some bands you just can't help but like. Whether it's their style, their music, or the desperate shagability of the lead singer, some groups just strike a chord. With Hercules And Love Affair, it's the untrammelled joy of a musical passion burst into life through a troupe of unique flamboyance. Replete with transsexual vocalists and a utopian love of New York disco circa 1975, the band are an evolving blend of house and slow-funk beats, Hawaiian lesbians and B-Boys, fronted by the DJ/songwriter Andy Butler - a man whose own career started in a Denver leather bar under the watchful gaze of a hostess named (what else?) Chocolate Thunder Pussy.Hercules' first album was a seminal homage to the mid '70s-'80s disco scene, revived and reworked by Butler with the counter-intuitive, but utterly wonderful, injection of Antony Hegarty's alluringly maudlin vocal. Together, they evoked the pulse and throb of the once vibrant disco movement before its reputation and growth were curbed by the explosion of AIDS, and the long shadow it has cast ever since. Lead single Blind was an effervescent but poignant slab of modern disco that, on release, encapsulated the vibrant craft of the Hercules project and, now, serves as just one more reason to dribble excitedly at Butler and co's new release, Blue Songs....full text |
| Pitchfork |
| Be warned, right off, that the Hercules and Love Affair on this album is not quite the same act as the group on 2008's Hercules and Love Affair. The band's songwriter, producer, and creative director, Andy Butler, remains in place, as does DJ/vocalist Kim Ann Foxman, but the others who lent their talents to the debut-- including singers Antony Hegary and Nomi Ruiz, DFA producer Tim Goldsworthy, and !!! bassist Tyler Pope-- are replaced by a new team on a new label. Among the new recruits are vocalists Aerea Negrot and Shaun Wright, and Bay Area producer Mark Pistel, whose previous credits include the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy and industrial acts like Meat Beat Manifesto and Consolidated. So be it; HLA was always a producer's group, and besides, Butler's taking a distinctly different tack on this album. Where Hercules and Love Affair built on the lush, rich sound of 1970s disco, Blue Songs is much more a house record-- specifically, house as it was understood around 1987, when Chicago sounded like the center of the musical universe. Its strongest tracks aim right at that target. "My House", in particular, is both a convincing pastiche of the heyday of Marshall Jefferson and Frankie Knuckles and a commentary on it from a remove of 20 years. ("My house is in order," goes the hook; how did nobody manage to think of that pun at the time?) As the album rolls on, though, Butler fails to recapture the chemistry he had with previous vocalists. Negrot and Wright are not quite anonymous, but lack the dynamic presence of previous contributors. While it's interesting to hear how his style works in a pop-house context, Kele Okereke of Bloc Party's guest appearance on "Step Up" falls flat, and the song's chorus ("Baby, you might just be like this/ Baby, this might be who you are") is hardly juicy enough to bring the track to life on its own. Nearly every dance track here still has something to recommend, like the mock-serious Grace Jones impression on "Answers Come in Dreams", or the swooping bass that introduces "Falling". "Visitor" distinctly recalls what Marshall Jefferson was doing when he went by the name Hercules on the 1986 single "7 Ways". But apart from "My House", nothing here feels like a complete package, and especially not the way "Blind", "Athene", "You Belong", "Hercules Theme" did last time....full text |
| Guardian |
| Hercules and Love Affair's eponymous debut was lovingly crafted revivalism that avoided mere mimicry via big, anthemic hooks and full-blooded performances. Its successor, Blue Songs, is also composed of immaculately produced house and disco, but the two most charismatic vocalists from the last go-round, Antony Hegarty and Nomi Ruiz, are absent – as, for the most part, are the songs. Matching their 2008 anthem Blind might have been too much to ask, but too much of Blue Songs sounds rote and empty. Not all: the hard-jacking, mechanical I Can't Wait has a single-minded focus, while Boy Blue begins as a pastoral ballad that lifts gorgeously into space. But it is dispiriting to hear Andy Butler attempt to faithfully recreate his own music, without any of its previous magic, on Painted Eyes and Falling. Blue Songs often sounds third-hand: pastiches of something that was a homage to begin with. To close, a feeble cover of It's Alright (originally by Sterling Void) feels like an admission of defeat....full text |
| Popmatters |
| Funeral Party’s debut album begins with a heck of an opening track. “New York City Moves to the Sound of LA” is a dance-inflected post-punk song that features a rumbling bassline, Latin-style agogo bells, high-speed hi-hat cymbals, and a catchy, angular guitar riff. Frontman Chad Elliot shout-sings his way through the verses before getting a bit more melodic in the chorus, saying “Now I know / That it’s all been done before and will all be done again / So pick up the trends”. It’s a strong start that’s echoed in the even dancier second song, “Car Wars”. This one features a full-on disco beat and bassline, not to mention the pitch-perfect inclusion of bongos in the background. The guitars from James Torres and Elliot’s vocals keep the song from sounding too polished, though, and Funeral Party ends up firmly on the post-punk side of their genre, albeit with a strong dance vibe. “Car Wars” is also where small problems start to show up in Funeral Party’s music. Despite the excellent groove, the song doesn’t leave much of an impression. After a few listens it becomes apparent that there’s very little beyond the groove that is memorable about the track. There’s no catchy guitar riff or great vocal melody to be found here. Third track “Finale” is more of the same. It has a couple of strong elements: A catchy, complex drumbeat and a really nice background synth line. Elliot’s yowl is impressive on this song too, and there’s a solid bridge featuring gang-vocal shouting, but once again there isn’t much melody to really drive the song, so it mostly relies on the forward propulsion of its drumbeat. As Golden Age of Knowhere moves along, Funeral Party’s deficiencies become more obvious. Their songs are almost all uptempo and upbeat-sounding, even when Elliot’s lyrics are angry. Guitar riffs and melodic hooks are in short supply after the first track, though, so the songs start to run together even before the halfway point of the album. The addition of Latin percussion to the band’s post-punk sound is a great element, but it largely disappears after the album’s first two tracks. This no doubt contributes to the rest of the album’s lack of character....full text |
| Nme |
| The next time you tippy-toe down to your local indie disco, spare a thought for Funeral Party. They’re probably at home, sat in a huddle, stabbing pins into the faces of tiny effigies of Pe-Do and J-Cas, yelping and “woo hoo”-ing to the gods of Mumbojumboland and desperately praying that a deal can be done with Old Nick to ensure that one tune – any tune – from ‘Golden Age Of Nowhere’ will become a dancefloor hit for eternity. Actually, fuck them, they don’t need your pity. If you believe everything the hype machine tells you, they’re more likely to be playing some painfully cool backyard party in an LA ghetto while a load of bummed-out punks and gangsters attack each other with screwdrivers and The Mars Volta’s engineer Lars Stalfors stands at the back fondling himself, hatching some evil plan that involves recording Funeral Party’s debut and making them as big as their obvious heroes, The Strokes. This is how it happened apparently (though we may have made up the bits about screwdrivers, fondling and evil plans). The result is a collection of 11 songs so desperate to be loved that it’s difficult at times not to hate this record. Not because it’s shit, because it isn’t. In ‘New York City Moves To The Sound Of LA’ and ‘Just Because’ – all reverb, scuzz and snotty bravado – Funeral Party prove that when all their disco-punk planets align, they can mix it with any of the bands they gleefully ape (check the Libs, The Rapture etc). The problem lies in songs like ‘Finale’, a cringeworthy re-hashing of ‘Can’t Stand Me Now’ as re-imagined by Stereophonics. Hell, lead singer Chad Elliot even sounds like Kelly Jones as he screeches, “I always knew we would end up just like his/So pour me one last drink with a final kiss”. It really is as bad as it sounds. So, to reiterate: not shit, just really fucking annoying. Annoying for its try-hard, ‘please play us at the disco’ stylings. Annoying for its po-faced seriousness. But more than anything, annoying for the fact that in its moments of brilliance, it’s the catchiest, danciest jangly guitar pop you’ll hear this side of the summer. Sadly, those moments are few and far between....full text |
| Guardian |
| "It's all been done before, it'll all be done again," cry Los Angeles quintet Funeral Party, neatly pre-empting Golden Age of Knowhere's unavoidable sense of recent nostalgia. Particularly, their walloped cowbells, post-punk guitars and jerky beats recall the mid-2000s punk-funk boom, with the opener New York City Moves to the Sound of LA a very close relation to the Rapture's House of Jealous Lovers. Deja vu aside, it's certainly hard not to be moved towards the dancefloor by Car Wars's strolling disco basslines, and their sheer intensity makes a exhausted style sound thrilling again. This is a band who don't know how to slow things down, hitting everything at the same high-octane pace, whether chanted vocals, frazzled walls of noise or drifts towards Killers-style epic rock. It does start to get wearying after a while, which makes the slower, moodier Relics to Ruins a change of gear that should perhaps occur more often....full text |
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