The Divine Comedy: Bang Goes the Knighthood
RIYL: Scott Walker, Pulp, Belle & Sebastian
After a three-year silence, Neil Hannon has suddenly reached Jack White levels of productivity. He and fellow Irishman Thomas Walsh made last year’s dead-brilliant, ELO-riffing Duckworth Lewis Method (the only concept album about cricket you’ll ever need), and a mere ten months later, Hannon has returned with yet another album, this one under his day job the Divine Comedy. It should surprise no one familiar with Hannon’s work that he has once again made a superb record.
Bang Goes the Knighthood boasts the same chipper tone as his last album, 2006’s Victory for the Comic Muse, though the first step out of the gate is a measured one. “Down in the Street Below” is half-ballad, half-baroque pop, exploring people’s tendencies to lose themselves in the hustle and bustle. Walsh delivers his trademark honey-dipped backing vocals on the scathing “Complete Banker” (“Maybe this recession is a blessing in disguise / We can build a much much bigger bubble the next time”), but the song that will have Gen X alt-rockers chuckling is “At the Indie Disco,” Hannon’s love letter to the Stone Roses and Wannadies, which finishes with one of his best couplets ever: “She makes my heart beat the same way / As at the start of ‘Blue Monday’ / Always the last song that they play.”
The one song that might have people scratching their heads – and will give Anglophobes a scrorching case of hives – is “Can You Stand on One Leg,” which is what “Mack the Knife” might have sounded like had it been written by Monty Python, and ends with Hannon holding an obscenely high falsetto note for 28 seconds. (You read that right.) It’s a tough one to swallow, trying just a bit to hard to be silly. He redeems himself on the next, and final track “I Like,” a driving love letter to his wife about the things he, yes, likes about her. It’s all just another day at the office for Hannon; pristine ork pop with smarts for days. Even better are the extra tracks that come with the download version, where Hannon engages in some oddball electronic experimentation and Kraftwerk sampling clearly borne from the Duckworth Lewis Method sessions. He’s great the way he is, but if Hannon chose to go in that direction next time around, he would get no argument here. (101 Distribution 2010)
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Posted in: Adult Contemporary, Artists, CD Reviews, Melodramatic, Pop
Tags: Bang Goes the Knighthood, Bang Goes the Knighthood CD review, Divine Comedy, Divine Comedy CD review, Duckworth Lewis Method, Eat Sleep Drink Music, Headlines, Neil Hannon, Thomas Walsh