Could it be that after almost five years of guitar-twanging shoe-gazers dominating the musical and clubbing mainstream, the people are ready to have fun again?
This was one conclusion to be drawn when, last month, internet gossip boards were abuzz with rumours that Kylie was to play the prestigious Friday night slot at this year's Glastonbury and Kanye West the Saturday night. The following week, the Brit nominations were announced and it became clear that this year's awards would be dominated by pop acts such as Leona Lewis, Take That and Mika. In this mood of fluffy abandon, it isn't the greatest mental leap to guess what might be coming next. Love it or hate it - and people tend to sit in one camp or the other - the circumstances couldn't be more ripe for the great disco revival of 2008.
Lucky, then, that Hercules and Love Affair are waiting in the wings. Hotly tipped by musical insiders, rumoured to include Kylie and Elton John (who loves them so much he is said to have booked them for his next bash), this four-piece of DJs and singers from New York could well be the modern saviours of boogie. Described blithely by their record company - DFA records, home to the maverick LCD Soundsystem - as embodying a "pan-sexual mix for our troubled times" (the band comprises a transsexual, a lesbian and two gay men), and with an eponymous album - a shimmering blend of disco, electro and pop - ready to be released, it seems that "le freak" is chic again.
For disco lovers on this side of the pond, this won't be a hard adjustment.
In the past few years, while the frivolity has steadily drained from New York's downtown scene - sapped by velvet ropes, bottle service and unimaginably drunk revellers - the reverse has happened here, where a quiet momentum has been building up, courtesy of characters such as Pablo Flack and his friends at Bistrotheque, in east London, and tabloid-friendly performance artists such as the drag queen Jodie Harsh. Hercules and Love Affair couldn't have timed it better.
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But this is new disco, Noughties-style. The album may be laced with beautiful harmonies, incisive lyrics and grown-up grooves, but none of them is wearing glittery eye shadow or gold lamé, and there isn't a pair of spandex hot pants in sight. Their peculiar sound has even been dubbed "morbid disco". Perfect for post-credit-crunch February days.
So, who are the band? There is singer, producer and long-time disco devotee, Andrew Butler, who has the excitable demeanour of a redheaded schoolboy. "Andy has disco in his loins," says Kim Ann Foxman, a vocalist, DJ and jewellery designer with a doll's face, rockabilly quiff and tattoos on both arms. She is sitting next to Butler on a sofa at London NYC, the Manhattan hotel that is also home to Gordon Ramsay's first American restaurant. Alongside her is Nomi, a husky-voiced, olive-skinned chanteuse with a streetwise R&B album, Lost in Lust, already in the bag. And finally there is Antony Hegarty.
If the others are unfamiliar to you, Hegarty probably isn't. The man behind Antony and the Johnsons won multiple plaudits, an enormous and adoring following and a Mercury music prize for his second album, I Am a Bird Now, three years ago.
If it seems strange that Hegarty's androgynous warble - so morose on I Am a Bird Now that some suggested it should have been issued with a wad of Kleenex - should be featuring on a neo-disco album, it isn't. When he was asked to do it, he agreed in a heartbeat. On Blind, the debut single, Hegarty sounds utterly joyous, as if, overnight, a DJ has saved his life. "It was refreshing to stretch out and sing these songs," he says now, not realising quite how out of character that sounds. In person, he is a towering but shy presence, clutching his purple messenger bag like a security blanket.
"Disco is no longer about cheesy wedding acts - it's a phenomenon," adds Butler, who is clearly set to take on the mantle of garrulous leader of the new funkadelics. Butler has had time to fine-tune his message. As a DJ, he played his earliest Donna Summer tunes at a gay leather bar in Denver, aged 15. When the police arrived, he took refuge in the loo with the hostess, Chocolate Thunder Pussy, but the experience has hardly scarred him. Hercules and Love Affair is Butler's ode to rococo disco before house music stole its thunder.
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Butler met Hegarty as a roadie on Turning, Hegarty's multimedia spectacle with 13 different women revolving on a dais, which was also where he met Nomi, who was one of the women. "When we started out, we were going into the cheapest dive studios and just having fun," says Hegarty. And indeed, the song True False/Fake Real evokes a riotous, Jim Henson-inspired jam session. "I've always been a fan of the Muppets," says Butler, who staged a mock marriage to Miss Piggy when he was six, enlisting his parents as witnesses. "When Andrew approached me, he really just wanted me to do my best Alison Moyet impression," adds Hegarty. And he does it effortlessly. Not that he'd admit it.
Resolutely humble, the troubadour refuses to take too much credit for the album, but it's clear he was instrumental in it. "He's been very supportive," says Butler.
The florid name of the project was plucked from a subplot of Jason and the Golden Fleece. "I read a myth about Hercules losing his male lover on an island, and I thought it was such a beautiful image," Butler says. "The idea of this strong, vulnerable man - it just made sense. One of the great things about disco is that it's so over the top. It takes a strong person to express themselves that openly."
Hegarty is currently toiling away at his next, no doubt gut-wrenching album, so the prospect of belting out self-assured crowd-pleasers to an adoring throng must sound like a treat. "I'm along for the ride," he says, beaming from ear to ear. BYO mirror ball.
Blind by Hercules and Love Affair (DFA/EMI) is released on March 3. The album is out on March 10