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Gavin B. · 10-16-2009, 10:50 AM

Song of the Day

Neil Hannon: England's pop satirist and musical subversive

The Happy Goth- Neil Hannon The kitschy lounge music of Neil Hannon never fails to bring a smile to my face. Neil was involved in the Divine Comedy a more conventional Britpop band that was frequently mentioned in the same conversations with Blur, Oasis and the Stone Roses in the early Nineties. After a couple of years and a couple of unsucessful albums, Hannon had done away with most of the band's original members, except the drummer and turned the Divine Comedy into a vehicle for his own idosyncratic brand of tongue-in-cheek Europop.

Neil Hannon's artistic oeuvre is located somewhere in the strange uncharted region of pop music that lies beyond the musical territory of Scott Walker, Ray Davies, Randy Newman, Monty Pyton and the classic 007 soundtrack music of John Barry.

With the release of the album Cassanova in 1996, Hannon's full blown artistic vision was realized. Two singles from Cassonova did well on the UK music charts. Something for the Weekend (at once soaring, cheeky, leering, and truly weird, with lyrics detailing a guy led astray by his lover and attacked by her secret thug companions) and Becoming More Like Alfie (a sly '60s acoustic pop number with solid percussion, sampling the Michael Caine movie in question and reflecting on how all the wrong people in life seem to get the girls) became Top Ten charters.

Recruiting the equivalent of a full orchestra didn't hurt Hannon's musical efforts either, fleshing out the classical/art rock/pop Divine Comedy fusion to even more expansive ranges than before, while drummer Darren Allison and Hannon continued overseeing and co-producing everything, again demonstrating their careful collective ear for the proceedings.

The Happy Goth comes from the Divine Comedy's 2004 album Absent Friends. It's an amusing observation of the Goth subculture. The video was shot on one of the rare occasions when Hannon performs a live concert with the full orchestral ensemble of the Divine Comedy that he makes his studio recordings with.

BONUS SONG: Perfect Lovesong- The Divine Comedy Perfect Lovesong gives you a pretty good idea of the sort of straight forward Britpop music Neil Hannon does when he isn't doing his off kilter parody of Sixties MOR baroque pop. Perfect Lovesong reminds me of the breezy SoCal pop of the Pet Sounds era Beachboys. I love the dorky garage band concept for the video, it reminds me of my own teenage years in the garageland.

10-16-2009, 10:50 AM	#104 (permalink)
Gavin B. Model Worker Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 1,248	Song of the Day Neil Hannon: England's pop satirist and musical subversive The Happy Goth- Neil Hannon The kitschy lounge music of Neil Hannon never fails to bring a smile to my face. Neil was involved in the Divine Comedy a more conventional Britpop band that was frequently mentioned in the same conversations with Blur, Oasis and the Stone Roses in the early Nineties. After a couple of years and a couple of unsucessful albums, Hannon had done away with most of the band's original members, except the drummer and turned the Divine Comedy into a vehicle for his own idosyncratic brand of tongue-in-cheek Europop. Neil Hannon's artistic oeuvre is located somewhere in the strange uncharted region of pop music that lies beyond the musical territory of Scott Walker, Ray Davies, Randy Newman, Monty Pyton and the classic 007 soundtrack music of John Barry. With the release of the album Cassanova in 1996, Hannon's full blown artistic vision was realized. Two singles from Cassonova did well on the UK music charts. Something for the Weekend (at once soaring, cheeky, leering, and truly weird, with lyrics detailing a guy led astray by his lover and attacked by her secret thug companions) and Becoming More Like Alfie (a sly '60s acoustic pop number with solid percussion, sampling the Michael Caine movie in question and reflecting on how all the wrong people in life seem to get the girls) became Top Ten charters. Recruiting the equivalent of a full orchestra didn't hurt Hannon's musical efforts either, fleshing out the classical/art rock/pop Divine Comedy fusion to even more expansive ranges than before, while drummer Darren Allison and Hannon continued overseeing and co-producing everything, again demonstrating their careful collective ear for the proceedings. The Happy Goth comes from the Divine Comedy's 2004 album Absent Friends. It's an amusing observation of the Goth subculture. The video was shot on one of the rare occasions when Hannon performs a live concert with the full orchestral ensemble of the Divine Comedy that he makes his studio recordings with. BONUS SONG: Perfect Lovesong- The Divine Comedy Perfect Lovesong gives you a pretty good idea of the sort of straight forward Britpop music Neil Hannon does when he isn't doing his off kilter parody of Sixties MOR baroque pop. Perfect Lovesong reminds me of the breezy SoCal pop of the Pet Sounds era Beachboys. I love the dorky garage band concept for the video, it reminds me of my own teenage years in the garageland.