No need for the National Express: Neil Hannon

A victory for the Divine songwriter

REVIEW - DIVINE COMEDY
St James's Church
by ALEX LARMAN

ST James’s Church might be an unusual venue for most rock bands to play, but then The Divine Comedy are an unusual rock band.
Briefly at the forefront of popular awareness in the late 90s, thanks to hit singles such as National Express and Something For The Weekend, they, or rather the singer-songwriter-creative genius Neil Hannon, have settled into a successful cultish niche as an arty, literate pop group, as happy to play a song dealing with sexual infidelity and jealousy as they are to celebrate long-distance bus travel.
They don’t actually play That Song tonight, probably because everyone’s sick of it. Instead, in the beautiful (if acoustically challenged) surroundings of the glorious Christopher Wren church in Piccadilly, Hannon and his seven-piece band run through half a dozen songs off the new album, Victory for the Comic Muse, and a selection of old favourites.
Sometimes, as with their Lennon-meets-Scott Walker obsessive love song If…, the new A Lady of a Certain Age and the atheist’s plea Eye of the Needle (as sung with apologies), they approach brilliance.
At their worst, however, they sound like a support band to a revived 60s headline act. The new single, Diva Lady, is especially weak, with smug celebrity-baiting lyrics and a monotonous chord sequence that never leads anywhere.
Hannon, fittingly the son of a Northern Irish bishop, was on charismatic form, alternately extolling the crowd to stand up for the poppier songs and sit down for the quiet ones. He announced, happily, at the end: “We can all get drunk afterwards, so that’s great!” If a couple of the rock star affectations verged on the over-literal, turning fan favourite Our Mutual Friend into a virtual dramatisation of the song, there is no doubt that his natural showmanship made the gig both intimate and epic, to pleasing effect.
Their new alum, Victory for the Common Muse, is out on June 19.

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