The Divine Comedy frontman and Duckworth Lewis Method collaborator has a new album out, a string of live shows and is in a 'lovely relationship'. No wonder he's in good spirits
Towards the end of a gig earlier this month, Neil Hannon was about to play "Alfie",
the Divine Comedy's tribute to Michael Caine's dashing, womanising creation. He picked up his guitar and put on a pair of NHS specs. "Who do I look like?" he asked the audience. "Rolf Harris!" someone shouted.
A little harsh on a man who's only turning 40 this November, but Hannon has no fear of ageing. "I was born old," says the wiry, bearded Northern Irishman as he sits next to me, in a suit and trilby. "I was an old man trapped in a young man's body. Now I'm an old man trapped in a middle-aged man's body." He pauses wistfully. "So I'm getting there…"
It is 20 years since the Divine Comedy recorded their first album, Fanfare for the Comic Muse, and since then Hannon's wit-laden songs – with their blend of upbeat poppy tunes and romantic melancholia – have established their own place in Britpop history, peaking in the late 90s when every student in the country seemed to know the words to
"National Express". Collaborators have come and gone (Hannon split from the rest of the band after the flop of Regeneration in 2001), but his talent for clever wordplay and grand orchestral arrangements has continued, and last year with Thomas Walsh he created
The Duckworth Lewis Method, the world's first concept record about cricket which just lost out to Paolo Nutini in the best album category at the
Ivor Novello awards.
However, to promote the Divine Comedy's latest album, Bang Goes the Knighthood, Hannon is – for the first time – touring alone. "For about three weeks before I started doing it I thought, 'What the hell were you thinking? This is insanity!'" he says. "There's no one else to look at! I have to entertain people for, like, two hours!" He points out that he gave up learning piano at grade 2 and that his guitar playing has similar technical shortcomings. "I can't riff, I can't jam, I can't noodle," he says, modestly, before adding: "but I know every chord that's there."
To those who see Hannon as a songwriter in the tradition of Noël Coward, Tom Lehrer et al, the solo show makes perfect sense: at the London gig, his set had an intimate, improvised feel, the numbers punctuated with self-deprecating jokes and audience banter. During one song, his tie fell off and he had to keep playing while it snaked around the keyboard. At the end he announced: "What a fucking disaster. I've lost all credibility. You've seen that I wear a clip-on tie…"
The tie and its accompanying bowler hat are
Bang Goes the Knighthood's signature look. Its title track tells the story of a City gent who skulks around in fetish parlours (Hannon refuses to confirm that it was inspired by Max Mosley). "The Complete Banker", meanwhile, was written when "the Allied Irish bank was crumbling and the Irish government were propping it up with our money, and I was thinking this is so unjust," says Hannon. "It's one of the few songs I've ever written really angrily."
This is a rare political moment for Hannon, who describes himself as a "big woolly liberal" ("I dislike extremism in any way because I've seen what extremism does in Northern Ireland"). The rest of the album charts his more usual course between the absurd and the personal. It includes a track called "When a Man Cries"; I ask him when he last cried. He waits a long time before answering. "This is really pathetic, but it was when I was parting from my girlfriend the other day and I got a bit choked up."
I reply that it sounds like he was pretty loved-up when he wrote the album – it contains three hallmark Hannon love songs – and at first he offers "no comment", but there's a goofy grin on his face that gives him away. "I'm in a lovely relationship," he eventually concedes. "Very happy." He also has an eight-year-old daughter, Willow, with his ex-wife, Orla; he describes fatherhood as "hilarious and time-consuming and fantastic and sometimes completely dull". As an example, he offers their current bedtime reading of Swallows and Amazons. "She really enjoys it. Unfortunately, I'm thinking, 'Arthur Ransome, you dry old git, will you stop talking about reef knots and sails and shit and just get to the story?'"
He laughs: the punchline is that he has written a musical version of Ransome's book, which will be directed by Tom Morris at Bristol's Old Vic this autumn, after three years in development. It was written for the National theatre, which then turned it down; Hannon wonders, teasingly, whether it was too happy for them. "My favourite musicals are The Sound of Music and My Fair Lady. I don't know whether Nick Hytner was looking for something a little more avant garde or 'political'…"
Hannon doesn't worry about labels; he's happy with his position as an "oddball" of the music scene. It is, he admits, a far cry from his 18-year-old self, who wanted nothing more than to be on Top of the Pops, and would have hoped – no, expected – to be filling stadiums by now. One new track, "At the Indie Disco", pays affectionate tribute to the scene that launched him ("Give us some Pixies and some Roses and some Valentines/ Give us some Blur and some Cure and some Wannadies"); it's a gentle, appreciative wave back at his own past. "A lot of indie music is about a fresh new sound," Hannon says thoughtfully. "Well, I'm afraid I don't really have a fresh new sound. I enjoy being contrary. It doesn't do much for album sales, but it's got me a certain niche. And it means I can carry on."
Faz hoje exactamente 30 anos que Ian Curtis decidiu deixar o planeta, pelo menos o nosso, pois ele, à sua maneira foi vivendo alternadamente entre os planetas que existiam na sua mente. É figura incontornável e atrevo-me mesmo a dizer que os Joy Division fizeram uma música que mudou o próprio conceito de música. A música servia de exorcismo aos fantasmas que o atormentavam, o conceito de música para ouvir/descontrair deixava de fazer sentido numa Manchester negra. Como era "cool" a depressão, a angústia e o sofrimento. Os New Order fugiram a sete pés mal puderam... é que ali cheirava-se a terra molhada.
Aqui fica uma ode à saudade. Continuo a ouvir Joy Division e a ficar imóvel perante tal beleza!
Comentário do Mojorising: Por mim podem fechar o ano de 2010. Este disco chega-me para este ano. Absurdamente bom e não é o álbum a seguir ao Boxer... o boxer foi apenas um aperitivo. Aconselho. É o disco de que hoje se fala. E não é por acaso. Entrados em cena em inícios dos anos zero com um álbum homónimo, levaram algum tempo a cativar atenções. Os primeiros sinais de “alerta” chegaram em Sad Songs For Dirty Lovers, em 2003. Mas foi apenas mais tarde, quando entre os álbuns Aligator (2005) e The Boxer (2007) fixaram uma identidade e respectiva linguagem, que o nome The National entrou num patamar claramente visível dentro do espectro do panorama indie rock. Melancolia projectada em canções bem construídas e com horizontes largos, herdeira de escolas maiores da vida pop/rock “alternativa” dos últimos 30 anos (Joy Division e The Smiths entre as fileiras, a música dos The National atingiu assim um ponto de invulgar unanimidade a caminho do final da década dos zeros. E é assim que, perante a chegada de novo episódio, High Violet surgisse como eventual candidato a garantir ao grupo norte-americano o “salto” para um outro nível, com visibilidade agora à escala global… A potencialidade, convenhamos, está claramente expressa num lote de canções que não escondem horas de meticulosa reflexão, a voz profunda de Matt Beringer ajustando-se a uma cenografia de arranjos de grande elegância. Num tempo em que o dia a dia se faz de dúvidas e receios, estes hinos sombrios podem mesmo acabar como uma das bandas sonoras de referência de 2010. Será este, assim, o disco que, como Out Of Time fez aos R.E.M. ou The Unforgetable Fire aos U2, elevará os The National a um espaço de vivência mainstream?... Isso só o tempo o dirá… Certo é que, se assim acontecer, não será fruto de uma qualquer “batota” do grupo que, na verdade, mais não faz em High Violet que apresentar uma evolução directa do que nos mostrara sobretudo nos dois discos anteriores. Se o “fenómeno” acontecer é porque o tempo presente se identificou com os The National (e não o contrário).
