 |
| Track list: 1. Down in the Street Below 2. The Complete Banker 3. Neapolitan Girl 4. Bang Goes the Knighthood 5. At the Indie Disco 6. Have You Ever Been in Love 7. Assume the Perpendicular 8. The Lost Art of Conversation 9. Island Life 10. When a Man Cries 11. Can You Stand Upon One Leg 12. I Like Running time: 44 minutes Released: 2010 |
The Divine Comedy. I remember taping (yes, cassette) National Express off the radio years and years ago - tapes were already well on the way out! - but never really picking anything else up. I also remember not getting tickets for a Ben Folds tour because it was co-headlined by The Divine Comedy and the person I would have gone with being very anti.
Yet Neil Hannon has always struck me as a top bloke - a view he confirmed by admitting to a love of cricket with The Duckworth Lewis Method. This is the final (or latest, if they are not defunct) Divine Comedy album and the only one I have - bought because of TDLM.
We kick off with a pacey number which brings to mind of American crooners of the 50s more than a modern recording. The lyrics are more modern, mind, and the structure of the song (or rather the lack of it) is definitely not a throwback. It does seem to go on for an eternity though, but when it ends we get a reaction to the global financial crisis with a title that for any Brit definitely reads with a W. I find it hard to describe the style, but I think it is fair to say this is music in support of lyrics not the other way around, and Hannon is a man with something to say. Generally (I always want to add an extra e to that word when I type it) there is tempo in the tune, and an airy arrangement with orchestral backing as called for. Jeez that is a nonsensical sentence; oh well.
It is cheery, not too serious, even as the message of a song may be a serious one, the arrangement is rarely less than positive in tone. Of course, as I type that the title track comes on and raises an exception. Will I never learn about speaking too soon? In other news, my first 2015 purchases have just dropped through my door (on a Sunday... how the world has changed) so the library will continue to grow as I go. I do suspect I am deleting more tracks than I am adding, but that is not reflected at the level at which I am conducting this project.
At the Indie Disco namedrops a load of 90s and noughties indie bands, and is a return to a more familiar happy-go-lucky sound. I think I would have hated this 20 years ago, been indifferent to it 10 years ago. 5 years ago when I picked it up and today? There is something nice and uncomplicated about it. I would not want all of my music to be this ... I don't know what the word I am looking for is. The nub is that as a change up this is really rather pleasant but it would get boring fast if I had too much of it. I think my ears may have been opened a little bit by getting into other indie-pop acts.
Fairly clever, fairly twee, fairly pleasant and pleasing enough that I am largely carried along by the wave of good feeling, especially when the tracks get a little more jaunty. OK, I am past half way now and there is a degree to which it becomes a little samey - but is an acceptable kind of sameness because fundamentally it is positive, happy music. I do not think I would ever sit down to listen to this album as an album again, but equally I am not feeling any drive to trim the songs from my collection. I can see their value as palette cleansers amongst a wider library. I am not finding much of note coming to mind as I listen though, just a few bits to back up the impression of Hannon I came into this post with.
You know what? I have found something more that ties back to the earlier point about old time American singers - lighter subject matter, vaguely comic with a purpose of entertainment. Light entertainment. And oh my god that is an unpleasantly piercing note held for far to long. That has to go, no place for that at all. Still, one bad apple does not mean the whole bunch is tainted, and the final song on the disc quickly pushes the horror out of my mind with another lightly entertaining positive song.
Yet Neil Hannon has always struck me as a top bloke - a view he confirmed by admitting to a love of cricket with The Duckworth Lewis Method. This is the final (or latest, if they are not defunct) Divine Comedy album and the only one I have - bought because of TDLM.
We kick off with a pacey number which brings to mind of American crooners of the 50s more than a modern recording. The lyrics are more modern, mind, and the structure of the song (or rather the lack of it) is definitely not a throwback. It does seem to go on for an eternity though, but when it ends we get a reaction to the global financial crisis with a title that for any Brit definitely reads with a W. I find it hard to describe the style, but I think it is fair to say this is music in support of lyrics not the other way around, and Hannon is a man with something to say. Generally (I always want to add an extra e to that word when I type it) there is tempo in the tune, and an airy arrangement with orchestral backing as called for. Jeez that is a nonsensical sentence; oh well.
It is cheery, not too serious, even as the message of a song may be a serious one, the arrangement is rarely less than positive in tone. Of course, as I type that the title track comes on and raises an exception. Will I never learn about speaking too soon? In other news, my first 2015 purchases have just dropped through my door (on a Sunday... how the world has changed) so the library will continue to grow as I go. I do suspect I am deleting more tracks than I am adding, but that is not reflected at the level at which I am conducting this project.
At the Indie Disco namedrops a load of 90s and noughties indie bands, and is a return to a more familiar happy-go-lucky sound. I think I would have hated this 20 years ago, been indifferent to it 10 years ago. 5 years ago when I picked it up and today? There is something nice and uncomplicated about it. I would not want all of my music to be this ... I don't know what the word I am looking for is. The nub is that as a change up this is really rather pleasant but it would get boring fast if I had too much of it. I think my ears may have been opened a little bit by getting into other indie-pop acts.
Fairly clever, fairly twee, fairly pleasant and pleasing enough that I am largely carried along by the wave of good feeling, especially when the tracks get a little more jaunty. OK, I am past half way now and there is a degree to which it becomes a little samey - but is an acceptable kind of sameness because fundamentally it is positive, happy music. I do not think I would ever sit down to listen to this album as an album again, but equally I am not feeling any drive to trim the songs from my collection. I can see their value as palette cleansers amongst a wider library. I am not finding much of note coming to mind as I listen though, just a few bits to back up the impression of Hannon I came into this post with.
You know what? I have found something more that ties back to the earlier point about old time American singers - lighter subject matter, vaguely comic with a purpose of entertainment. Light entertainment. And oh my god that is an unpleasantly piercing note held for far to long. That has to go, no place for that at all. Still, one bad apple does not mean the whole bunch is tainted, and the final song on the disc quickly pushes the horror out of my mind with another lightly entertaining positive song.
No comments:
Post a Comment