Burning Light

May 5 2009

The Beauty All Around

a wanderer's guide to The Divine Comedy

So here we are. And, to be truthful, if you'd told me I'd be going crazy over often heavily orchestrated, often super-romantic and just as equally often emotionally-honkin'-to-(and sometimes well past)-the-point-of-overwrought pop music, I'd've cranked up the amps and chased you away. But again, here we are. This stuff is just too smart, too well done, often too emotionally perfect -- and let's get right down to it, too beautiful -- to ignore.

The songs of The Divine Comedy don't happen by accident (even when I don't like where they go -- and we'll talk about that plenty later on) or purely out of passion (although to be sure, that passion remains intact in the final product). Neil Hannon is a craftsman, but one whose adoration toward the music he creates is apparent from conception straight through to realization. And it oozes out in just about every songs he creates. And for that reason if no other, I've gotta love the guy.

And yes, I know no-one else besides me (and now tim & rick) have heard of these guys in the States, and even I stumbled across them quite by accident. They've had some success in Britain, and comparable success in France and Hannon's homeland of Ireland (of which he hails from the northern part). And that's just unfortunate, although it bears out the message of the music: Doing what you love, and doing it with intelligence, passion, and panache, will get you nowhere. Unless, of course, the success is in creating such music at all. And for me, it is. So on we go with our primer....

Fanfare for the Comic Muse (1990) - Wherein Mssr. Hannon and those who happened to be in the room at the time sound nothing like the DC we'll come to know and love, but do a pretty good R.E.M. imitation. So while this long EP is totally unrepresentative and barely a shadow of what's to come, it's enjoyable enough in its way. Although, like R.E.M., it's hard to tell what Neil's saying. (Although-er, unlike R.E.M., once we can hear the lyrics, we'll be left slackjawed by how good they are.) But with titles like "Ignorance Is Bliss" and "Logic vs. Emotion," you know he's saying something.

Still, three years of reinvention followed, finally resulting in....

Liberation (1993) -- The first real DC album. While there's still traces of R.E.M.-ish guitar here (which again, isn't a bad thing), the orchestra (or at least the string quartet) has entered the building, the baroque melodies have made themselves known, literary and debonaire Neilishness has made its way to the forefront, and just plain good songs and lyrics make themselves known here. As does pretty much the same picture of Neil on every stinkin' album for awhile.

Although it will be surpassed several times over, Liberation is probably the DC's most plain likeable album -- you're hearing someone find his voice right before your ears, and he's not entirely taken with his reflection nor with his own self-seriousness here. Thus, you get songs ranging from the lovely openers "Festive Road" and "Death of a Supernaturalist" to the F. Scott Fitzgerald-drenched-in-Carnaby Street "Bernice Bobs Her Hair" to the delightfully snarky and string-laden "I Was Born Yesterday" ("and I believe everything you say") and the equally snarky and appropriately blippy "Europop"; to the near wry and perfect pop of "Your Daddy's Car" ("We wrapped it around a tree / We didn't know what for / We didn't feel like driving anymore / It was so good, we got bored") and "Lucy," an Smiths-like adaptation of three different Wordsworth poems, for crying out loud.

And besides being a great title (and a great song), "The Pop Singer's Fear of the Pollen Count" is only one of three songs I know of that address the connection (or disconnection) between hay fever and sex. But while Ray Davies whines about not being able to perform while his head's imploding (The Kinks' "Hay Fever") and the brothers Mael naturally lose their girl to the allergist treating her (Sparks' "Achoo"), Neil joyfully and jauntily forges on through his symptoms ("She feels like celebrating life / And so should we! / How can you talk that way / On such a lovely day? / When sunshine comes your way / It's time to make some hay / I fall for this season every time... I can't help myself / I'm in love with the summertime.")

Promenade (1994) -- Longtime DC fans swear by this one. I still haven't connected with it. I can't argue that it's a fully realized album conceptually (a day in the life of two lovers) and arguably musically (the orchestration is now totally front and center) -- and it does have some great moments -- but for me it's all too precious all too often.

That said, let's talk about those great moments, such as the opening two minutes of "Bath" (i.e., before the narrative kicks in); the absolutely gorgeous and wistful "The Summerhouse"; the driving romantic fan favorite "Tonight We Fly"; or the elongated argument between Neil and God that closes out "Don't Look Down" -- and again, let us not forget that Neil's the prodigal son of a Northern Irish bishop...

We get the feeling that we're not alone in this

And then a God who really ought not to exist

Sticks out a great big hand

And grabs me by the wrist

And asks me "Why?" and I say,

"Well God, it's like this --

It may be arrogance

Or just appalling taste

But I'd rather use my pain than let it all go to waste

On some old god who tells me what I want to hear

As if I cannot tell obedience from fear

I want to take my pleasures where and how I will,

Be they disgraceful or distasteful or distilled

And to be frank I find that life has more appeal

Without a driver who's asleep behind the wheel."

Then God decides that he has taken quite enough

Of all this atheistic tosh I'm spouting off....

And then I hear a voice say

"Don't look down!"

Casanova (1996) -- The Divine Comedy begin the height of their popularity, putting three singles in the Top 30 on the British charts. And I don't especially like any of them, or much of the rest of the album (OK, "The Frog Princess" is kinda charming in an odd, pithy way, as Neil croons over a melody that more than a little borrowed from "La Marseillaise": "I had to see if underneath that dress / Her heart was really made of stone... But how was I to know that just one kiss / Could turn my frog into a cow?... You don't really love me and I don't really mind / 'cause I don't love anybody.") Suffice to say, debonair, smarmy Neil is front-and-center here - complete with spoken come-on interlude, and frankly, it eeks me out. That's pretty much all I want to say about this one.

A Short Album About Love (1997) -- Wherein the man who just got finished saying, "I don't love anybody" has apparently changed his mind. And boy, does the music stop suffering for it.

The orchestras AND the guitars are back. It's over the top in places, sure, but Neil's clearly enjoying himself so much here that who cares? Starting with the bouncy "In Pursuit of Happiness," in which he nearly cries in joy: "And hey, I'm not the kind to fall in love without good reason / And if that's a crime, then baby I'm committing high treason / Cause when you're with me I'm absolutely and totally / Quite uncontrollably haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaap-py!" Equally in the overwrought-but-who-cares department is "If": "If you were a tree / I could carve my name into your side / And you would not cry, / 'Cos trees don't cry / If you were a man / I would still love you.... If your name was Jack / I'd change mine to Jill for you / If you were a horse / I'd clean the crap out of your stable / And never once complain... If you were my little girl / I would find it hard to let you go / If you were my sister / I would find it doubly so / If you were a dog / I'd feed you scraps from off the table.... Then you'd be my loyal four-legged friend / You'd never have to think again / And we could be together till the end."

And then there's the absolute cream of the crop, the sweetly funny, self-deprecatingly heartbreaking, and just freaking perfect "Everybody Knows (Except You)":

I told all of my friends

Again and again and again

I drove them round the bend

So now you're my only friend

I told the passersby

I made a small boy cry

And I'll get through to you

If it's the last thing that I do

'Cause everybody knows that I love you

Everybody knows that I need you

Everybody knows that I do

Except you

Everybody knows I live for you

Everybody knows I adore you

Everybody knows that it's true

Except you.

Fin de Siecle (1998) -- Wherein Neil confronts the end of a millennium and rises to the occasion in every way conceivable, even while fending off further Casanova moments. And naturally, it's again the smarmiest, most annoying songs that chart here, including the (to me, but apparently not to England) unlistenable "Generation Sex" and the at least cheeky "National Express" -- cheeky in more ways than one, given its most memorable lines: On the National Express there's a jolly hostess / Selling crisps and tea / She'll provide you with drinks and theatrical winks / For a sky-high fee / Mini-Skirts were in style when she danced down the aisle / Back in '63 / But it's hard to get by when your arse is the size / Of a small country."

But it's the other two-thirds of an album that holds its own with anything Neil Hannon -- or any other songwriter on the planet, for that matter -- has ever done. Over and over, he takes small things and turns them into life-and-death matters -- not least of all because of the incredibly orchestrated arrangements accompanying them. This is BIG music, and standing in counterpoint to the small Joycean moments of epiphany it envelops and elevates. Really -- and I mean, really -- this is Neil Hannon's Dubliners (or rather, Belfasters).

Thus, we get "Commuter Love," an crazy-lovely ode to having a crush on a girl on the train ("She doesn't know I exist / I'm gonna keep it like this / I'm not gonna take any risks this time... She reads novels by French authors with loose morals / She can do no wrong / I wouldn't say I'm obsessed / I don't wanna see her undressed / We can be prince and princess in my dream."). And the music practically screams, "How has Neil Hannon never been tapped to soundtrack a James Bond movie?" It's that big, that melodramatic, and FAR more wonder-filled.

And the music only gets bigger and more impossibly gorgeous from there, even as Neil sings of dreaming of retiring in Sweden ("Sweden") and elegizes in the self-explanatory yet transportational "Eric the Gardener." "Life on Earth" comes down a bit from there, but reinforces the album's message nicely, with a the tune that goes from French café music to yet more striking, crooning bigness: "Always to thine own self be true / Not to fools like me / Who'll change their minds / For the sake of rhyming schemes... Good times come and they go / This life owes nobody happiness / Only pain and sorrow / So don't rely on the stars above / Screw the universe / You'd better try to live your life on earth."

"The Certainty of Chance" revs things up even higher, even as Neil blends the Y2K bug with the Butterfly Effect, and of course manages to wangle a love song out of it: "A butterfly flies through the forest rain / And turns the wind into a hurricane, yeah.... / A schoolboy yawns, sits back, and hits return / While 'round the world, computers crash and burn.... / You must go and I must set you free / 'Cause only that will bring you back to me / Oh I know that it will happen / Because I believe in the certainty of chance."

And just when you think he's done, the songs flies into Moody Blues territory, complete with fully orchestrated spoken-word interlude: Sometimes at night the darkness and silence weighs on me. Peace frightens me. Perhaps I fear it most of all. I feel it's only a facade, hiding the face of hell. I think of what's in store for my children tomorrow; "The world will be wonderful", they say; but from whose viewpoint? We need to live in a state of suspended animation, like a work of art; in a state of enchantment... detached. Detached.

But wait, kids, he's not finished. Catch as many breaths as you can. You'll need them all.

Because in an album full of little things rendered life-and-death moments, Neil Hannon saves the best for last. And sends this message along the way: Sometimes little things really DO become a matter of life and death -- like, for instance, a religious war that drills all the way down into things as seemingly trivial as a town name.

"Sunrise" hearkens back to Neil's Northern Ireland childhood, and was inspired by the bombing of his childhood town of Enniskillen. Opening with a harpichord and a lovely swaying melody, it just keeps growing from there, and as beautiful as the music is, Neil's singing is not only matches it but overtakes it:

I was born in Londonderry

I was born in Derry City, too

Oh, what a special child

To see such things and still to smile

I knew that there was something wrong

But I kept my head down and carried on

I grew up in Enniskillen

I grew up in Innis Kathleen too

Oh what a clever boy

To watch your hometown be destroyed

I knew that I would not stay long

So I kept my head down and carried on....

And with that set-up comes the biggest finish imaginable, with Neil's vocals again conquering the bigness of the music itself, rising from a Morrisonesque moan higher and higher with the orchestra, before even said orchestra has to finally succumb to an impossibly beautiful falsetto:

Who cares where national borders lie?

Who cares whose laws you're governed by?

Who cares what name you call a town?

Who'll care when you're six feet beneath

The ground....

If not you're bawling like a baby at this point, excuse my saying so, but you're just fucking stupid.

And yet, Neil isn't finished. Not by a long shot.

Now that everything in sight has been reduced to human rubble, he metaphorically begins to raise both the listener and his homeland from the ashes, with yet another fully orchestrated, fully throated howl of hope:

From the corner of my eye

A hint of blue in the black sky

A ray of hope, a beam of light

An end to 30 years of night

The church bells ring, the children sing

What is this strange and beautiful thing?

It's the sunrise!

CAN YOU SEE -- THE SUNRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISE?

I CAN SEE -- THE SUNRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISE!

And somehow he accomplishes all of this in less than 3 1/2 minutes. I'm still quite serious when I say this might well be the most beautiful song I've ever heard. I still haven't recovered that I can give an objective opinion. It levels me every single time. And I know I haven't even touched describing it. But as always, listen to it and tell me I'm wrong.

A Secret History of... (1999) -- Simply put, the greatest-hits album, reaching #3 in England on its own. But again, you now know how I feel about most of their hits.

That said, it's worth tracking down for the NEW hit found only here, "Gin-Soaked Boy." I'm guessing that this was the most fun 15 minutes Neil Hannon ever had writing a song. You can imagine him tossing out the lines to this thing one right after the other. As immediately catchy, funny and fun as it reads:

I'm the darkness in the light

I'm the leftness in the right

I'm the rightness in the wrong

I'm the shortness in the long

I'm the goodness in the bad

I'm the saneness in the mad

I'm the sadness in the joy

I'm the gin in the gin-soaked boy...

I'm the ghost in the machine

I'm the genius in the gene

I'm the beauty in the beast

I'm the sunset in the east

I'm the ruby in the dust

I'm the trust in the mistrust

I'm the Trojan horse in Troy

I'm the gin in the gin-soaked boy...

I'm the spirit in the sky

I'm the catcher in the rye

I'm the twinkle in her eye

I'm the Jeff Goldblum in "The Fly"

Well, who am I?

Regeneration (2001) -- Figures that the man who closed the last millennium so auspiciously would open a new millennium with this. And unless something radical happens in the next eight months, this remains the best album of the decade. So why don't you own it?

Absent Friends (2004) -- After two HUGE statements, a wedding and the birth of a daughter, it's not surprising that this one turns more intimate and personal. Not to say there's not a ton of orchestration and arrangement here. But it's also probably the most musically diverse and/or quirky DC album.

And things get off on the right foot with "Charmed Life." Tim has a point in that it's a bit music-hallish, but it works and here's why: First, I have Fin de Siecle and this on the same CD, so I'm still a mess from "Sunrise." More to the point, though, is the unusual self-acknowledgement that the singer's truly been blessed, and that he wishes the same for the person he's singing to, which you assume is his wife:

When I hold you in my arms,

And look back on my charmed life

My charmed life

I hope, I hope if nothing more

That one day you live

A charmed life

Until you get later into the song, and while you realize his marriage is part of the charm, who he's really singing to is his baby daughter:

Well the course of true love never ran smooth

They broke my heart, and I broke theirs too

And breaking up was so very hard to do

But I knew I'd find the one

And sure enough she came along

And not long after that, along came you

And thus, as he reprises the chorus and you realize who he's really holding in his arms, it's unbelievably touching.

Other moments here touch on the joys of family and the pain of having to leave them, coming in the one-two punch of the extremely melodramatic but no less affecting "Leaving Today" ("try to wrestle free / But like the dew she clings to me... / 'Release me, let me go / I love you more than you could know / All I can do is promise to come home to you / I tip-toe from the bed / And put my head around the nursery door to say good-bye / It breaks my heart every single time... I would stay if you asked me / so for God's sake don't ask me to stay / My taxi has arrived / Goodbye, sweet simple life. Goodbye.") and the humorous yet charming single that comes in the Echo and the Bunnymen meets The Smiths meets '70s airline commercial (then lets Roger McGuinn sit in for the bridge) of "Come Home Billy Bird":

He hails a cab but the driver sucks;

He drives real slowly and he talks so much

That it hurts Billy Bird's aching brain.

He runs from the cab to the check-in desk

She says "no way" but William begs

On his knees.... "Please please please"... "Well, OK..."

Drenched in sweat, he finds his seat

And with the luggage squeezed down beneath his feet

He begins to think that things can't get no worse.

And then a voice says, "Bags that can't be stowed

In the overhead lockers must go below

In the hold. Please let go. Thank you, Sir."...

He runs on past the carousel

Screaming '"Damn my luggage all to Hell

I can buy a new shirt and tie anyday!"

He rides from the airport into town

To the high school football ground

Where his son has just begun his big football game....

Elsewhere we find possibly the most unique song in the DC pantheon in the Schoenberg-meets-Lennon "Wreck of the Beautiful," an elegy to a sunken British ship; an affectionate flamenco to a confused teenage girl in "The Happy Goth" ("'Don't worry Mum, don't worry Dad / The hours that I spend alone are the happiest I've ever had' / That's what she'd say if she ever spoke to you / But it's something she can never do"); and the most unique country-gone-symphony song you'll ever come across in "Freedom Road," as one can only assume it's about a trucker having an epiphany, a breakdown, or both....

It's early morning on I-19.

I ain't got much for company,

A pick-up truck, a brown Volvo,

And a couple of jokers on the radio...

When I was a boy I'd fantasize

About the freedom road. I'd drive

A thousand miles before sundown,

Father a child in every town.

But a hundred thousand miles have passed

Between me and iconoclastic images

Of the freedom road.

I wanna shed this heavy load.

Well I've seen the power of the lightning storm,

I've seen the endless ears of corn,

I've seen the lakes at the break of day,

And that shit takes my breath away.

But if I were to even start

To tell them how it melts my heart,

Never more would my truck-stop friends

Look me in the eye again.

It's early morning on I-19,

A dreamer's waking from his dream,

A driver who has lost his way

Parks up his rig and walks away.

The title song is more a tribute to "friends" or rather heroes Neil's never met including fellow Enniskillen schoolmate (albeit separated by a century) Oscar Wilde, Steve McQueen, and Laika, the first dog shot into space. And yet, Neil's best big-time Bowie-doing-Anthony-Newley impression makes it all sound great.

Victory for the Comic Muse (2006) -- If you've lasted this long, you'll notice a connection between this title and the DC's first EP. It's kinda saying, "Hey Ma, I made it." And if that didn't convey the message, the Noel-Coward-with-a-banjo "Mother Dear" certainly does:

It was not that long ago it first occurred to me

That my mother was a person in her own right

Now I realize how very lucky I have been

And there, but for the grace of God, go I...

When I was a teenager I really did believe

That my parents had adopted me

And the way I carried on they must have thought

They'd brought the wrong little baby home from maternity

I'd like to say I'm sorry but my

Mother dear -- she already knows....

This album's grown on me quite a bit since I first heard it. And yet, victory laps also imply slowing down a bit, and I'd have to say that's true here as well. The first half, in particular, features the reappearance of the onerous Casanova persona -- with "To Die a Virgin," "Diva Lady," and "A Lady of a Certain Age" -- and threatens to shut me down early, although these'un's aren't quite as obnoxious as the earlier ones (although "Virgin" comes close); and "Diva Lady" have some funny lines: "She's a diva lady / She's a hopeless case / She needs extra make-up / For her extra face... She's got special needs / She wants chocolate candy / But no blue ones please ... She's got a famous boyfriend / They go out in style / She makes him look hetero / And he helps her profile."

The good news is that -- after a clunky segue from the lovely, optimistic "Light of Day" to the once-more Casa-nnoying "Party Fears Two" -- the second half picks up and continues the experimentation in Absent Friends. And in an interesting change, the lyrics very much take a back seat to the music. After the eminently catchy and lovingly bewildered "Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World" ("I don't understand her / She doesn't make any sense to me / I don't understand her / It's like she's speaking in Swa-hi-li... She's a mass of contradictions / A pick'n'mix of strange convictions / It can be a source of friction / But there are worse afflictions") comes the final three progressively intriguingly arranged tunes, in the uber-dramatic "The Plough," the almost stream-of-consciousness "Count Grassi's Passage Over Piedmont," and the somber yet lovely "Snowball in Negative" ("All through its short life it gives of itself / Giving and giving and slowly diminishing / Until there isn't a crumb of it left / It no longer is, it's a snowball in negative"). It's worth it just for the music to these three.

And there we are. For now.

And with a new DC album due later this year, what's next? Could be great, could be too annoying to bear. Although as Neil recently divorced his wife of eight years (yes, the same he pledged "We'll hold on to each other / 'Til we're old and grey" in "Perfect Lovesong"

), I'm kind of betting on the Mother of all Trouble on the Farm albums from our hopeless romantic. In short, the only album capable of surpassing Regeneration this decade. But as always, we'll see.

Posted by: burninglight at 00:06 | link | comments (6)

Comments:

#1 14 May 2009 - 08:31

thank you. That was beautiful. you realize this review's gonna cost me like $200, don't you? i guess i'll start w/'Fin' and go from there. thanks again for introducing me to this guy, is he not magnificent?

timbyrnes

#2 14 May 2009 - 13:37

There ARE other ways to acquire said material. :) But yeah, I'm think Fin first.

burninglight

#3 16 May 2009 - 02:00

Yo Tim: I'm gonna make it easy for you. They're edited to fit on two disks, but there's four albums headed yr way. The Fin/Friends one is the better one, but the Promenade/Short Album one is worth it just for "Everybody Knows (Except You)" and the slightly truncated version of "Gin-Soaked Boy" (which cuts of at "I'm Jeff Goldblum." :))

burninglight

#4 27 May 2009 - 05:10

Got 'em and diggin' 'em as we speak. Billy Byrd's my instafave but I'm looking foreward to growing old(er) w/these records. A thousand thanks again.
tim

timbyrnes

#5 27 May 2009 - 13:49

Wait a minute.... I didn't SEND the one with Billy Bird....

burninglight

#6 27 May 2009 - 13:50

Wait a minute.... yes, I did.... That's Absent Friends, not Victory.... that's what 4 hours of sleep'll do....

burninglight

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Posted by: burninglight at 00:06 | link | comments (6)