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"Old forms equals new life?" New label, new direction, new pressures? Choosing a new direction is a
hard
and dangerous business. For reasons as varied as lack of courage, talent,
ego and business concerns, there are few bands who follow their muse in
a
vacuum. Yet, how can anyone prove a band's lack of concern for such
matters, and does such contrivance matter if one likes the end result?
Arriving on stage, at 9 p.m. last night, it was clear that a new phase
of
The Divine Comedy was being revealed. Appearing in almost self-consciously
casual clothes, they meant business, playing with a cohesiveness, vigour,
and enthusiasm not seen since the Casanova tour, but the most marked change
of all, was the absolute sincerity of the delivery, the complete absence
of
the self-possession expressed through the shy, playfully coquettish songs
of
old.
Opening with the guitar arpeggio based meander of "Timestretched",
which
Neil sang in an effectively languid, soporific, helpless voice, the band
performed all eleven songs off the new album, as well as 6 old songs, three
of which came from Fin de Siecle, which unfortunately did as much to
highlight the bands' strengths as it did their weaknesses.
Musically, there is a lot to love about the new songs. Though few are
immediately satisfying, they may be characterised by clever and often
elegant arrangements, with layers of intertwining melody building to good
effect. Instruments uncommon to the mainstream appear including
glockenspiel, trombone, recorder and church organ and are particularly
effective on Lost Property, Eye of the Needle, The Beauty Regime and
the new, if not immediately catchy single Love What You Do. Analogue
electronica has also been added, and is all the more effective for its spare
usage, with Joby and Pinkie hidden behind a stack of equipment, looking
every inch the mad, and frequently hugging scientists.
Having said that however, there is a reliance on guitar, bass and drums
at
the core of the songs, around which arrangements occasionally felt tacked
on. In fact, the reliance on the "traditional" guitar band instruments
made
some songs sound self-consciously "indie", like the syntactic blunders of
a
non-native speaker. While Regeneration carries an effective guitar solo
climax and Bad Ambadassor gets by on a decent sing-along chorus, "Note
to
Self" sounds particularly unconvincing in it's "What the f--- is happening"
final verse, despite it's graceful bass line. Elsewhere, the vocal pause
at
Mastermind's climactic word "free" is appallingly contrived and just doesn't
work, and Dumb It Down is mired by a dull repetitive melody which no
arrangement could lift. This unhappy nadir should surely have relegated
to
a b-side, especially since its melody is unfortunately not its worst
offence.
There is one moment of immediately identifiable loveliness, Perfect Lovesong a Beatles/Beach Boys pastiche, but none the worse for that. However,
its middle eight is simply undercooked, and is crying out for vocal
harmonies that weedy recorders simply cannot provide.
Clever arrangements aside, there is little-to-no originality in the music,
but there is some amount of beauty, Lost Property's ghostly backing vocals
against gentle piano, Eye of the Needle's organ, but the biggest let-down
of all of the new songs are the lyrics, or rather the subject matter.
While Neil Hannon's lyrics have hitherto been characterised by a wry wit
and
a sensitivity to the sound of the words themselves they didn't reveal
anything about himself. Now It seems the he wishes to be more honest and
open, to bare a little more of his soul, but if one's going to dig around
one's psyche, one had better not prevaricate, and on the evidence of these
songs there may be a few too many lyrical cop-outs regardless of how
frequently pleasing the music is.
Simply put, he's taken on topics that are just too big for his lyrical bite.
He gets away with this on Timestretched (his experiences as a "celebrity",
a theme echoed in lines elsewhere), Lost Property (how much value and
self-worth we invest in things), Bad Ambassador (the lure of pop star
dissipation) and most successfully on Eye of the Needle (dichotomy between
spiritual yearning and material comfort), but there are any number of albums
and songs where these themes are dealt with far better - Pulp's This is
Hardcore album, most of Radiohead's OK Computer, Elvis Costello's The Other
Side of Summer or Poor Fractured Atlas and parts of REM's Up spring
to
mind.
However, it is when he moves from the particular to the general, as on
Regeneration, The Beauty Regime, Love What You Do, Mastermind and
Dumb it down that he more than once falls into sub sixth-form poetry,
e.g.
"Beauty is not the same thing as youth" (Mastermind). This plumbs the
furthest depths in the utterly vile Dumb it Down with lyrics of such
devastating banality as "You've got a personality/We'll throw you in the
sea
and watch you drown/Dumb it down" and "everything is mindless fluff/Like
this world's not dumb enough". It is not fit to lick the boots of
Subterranean Homesick Alien, its so obvious touchstone.
Little of this seems to matter to the capacity crowd, who greet the new
songs more than warmly, and with considerable attention. They also get
stuck into the older songs with much enthusiasm, turning an acoustic
National Express and semi-unplugged Becoming More Like Alfie (just Ivor accompanying Neil)
into feel-good sing-alongs.
However, leaving the gig, one can't help feel that the Divine Comedy's art
may have been in their artifice. Whether this new-found but flawed
openness, despite the large amount of loveliness it has to offer, will
attract the attention of the Coldplay kiddies is very much open to debate.
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