The Divine Comedy - 'Absent Friends' (Parlophone)
4/5
By: Toby L
Oscar Wilde, Steve McQueen - each given airspace in the belt-it-out, orchestral swirl of The Divine Comedy's latest album, 'Absent Friends'. And that's just track-one.
Camp? Just slightly. In album number-whatever-it-is, Neil Hannon sounds and writes gayer than gayer than Graham Norton organising a synchronised line-kicking display at a Kylie tribute concert. There's ravishing string-arrangements, elegant, choral female backing-vocals, and barely a hint of the straightforward, cheeky indie-tunefulness that infested such memorable singles as 'Something For The Weekend' and 'National Express'. Quite, this is the record we all feared would dawn upon us after much suggestion - The Great Big F**king Broadway Extravaganza.
But, in practice, it's all quite admirable. Though it's set to be his most slated release to date by the blinkered hacks, 'AF' is a classically inspired, grotesquely bold compilation of crooner-based, mini-operatic tomes documenting Hannon's adjustment to becoming a father, and entering his dirty thirties. It's this contemplativeness, such uncertainty, that invigorates drama-strewn epics as 'Leaving Today' with a pain and theatrical grandeur that few others could pull off with such absorbing conviction.
The only hints otherwise to Neil's prior template of cheeky keyboards, character-driven reliance are the Lauren Laverne-guesting 'Come Home Billy Bird', and the laughably, knowingly obtuse 'The Happy Goth'. Elsewhere, it's more of the former, with the occasional oddity - the banjo-boasting 'My Imaginary Friend' - possessive of oft painfully direct, simplistic lyricism and that enriching, instantly warming croak of Hannon's which begs wider respect. Best of all are the reflective likes of a haunting 'The Wreck Of The Beautiful', or a closing 'Charmed Life', in which value is instilled upon the treasure of experience ('I hope, if nothing more/That one day will call your life/A charmed life'). Yes, you'd think he's eighty the way this saddo harps on.
But he's a gifted, quite singular saddo. Wetter than the sleeping-blanket of a toddler, yes, but through a nicely ingratiating poignancy, distinctly Irish charm and penchant for a song, we can't help but tilt our caps to a true modern storyteller-wonder. This far down the line, he's still got plenty to look back at and feel proud of.
Artists in this article: The Divine Comedy
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