While spending a two day sabbatical at the monastery in Montserrat in September, I watched a program about the revival of crooners. The show featured Adam Green, Robbie Williams and extensive interviews with a rather charming fellow calling himself The Divine Comedy.
Neil Hannon makes up the sole permanent member of The Divine Comedy, a group he first began with friends from home in Northern Ireland when he was 18. After his school mates went off to university, Neil continued to write music alone and after 18 months of living in his parent's attic, produced the album Liberation in 1993- an album which the NME hailed as "...one of the bountiful, overflowing joys of the year. Any year."
Since then, Hannon has released 5 more albums, including a best of in 1999 and this year's new release Victory for the Comic Muse, written the theme song to Father Ted, worked with Guy Chambers and collaborated with Air, Jarvis Cocker and Nigel Godrich for the new Charlotte Gainsbourg album.
I grew up on the sounds of Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby wafting through my house, so Hannon's deep baritone feels familiar and warm to me. His soft, beautiful, musical arrangements lend perfectly to the airy lyrics that sing of women acting as divas and a teenage boy not wanting to die a virgin. VFTCM is an album I can see myself listening to on a car ride to the country on a late summer's day, the kind of day where you can smell autumn on the air. All of The Divine Comedy's albums, not just the most recent, are a perfect deviation from the Clash revival sweeping through so many new groups.
Tour: The Divine Comedy will be touring the UK and Ireland through November. Check out Hannon's website for tour dates and prices.
Website/MySpace
Download: Too Young to Die
Diva Lady
Downloads are courtesy of Obscure sound. Mike over there chose Victory for the Comic Muse as one of his top albums of 2006 so far. Please go over there and say thanks.
Video: 'Diva Lady'
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