tim. (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} o_song) wrote,@ 2007-01-20 18:15:00 |
|
Top 10 of 2006. #07. The Divine Comedy - Victory For The Comic Muse
The Divine Comedy. Victory For The Comic Muse
Parlophone/EMI Records.
"To Die A Virgin"
(3:40, 8.73mb)
Track 1.
"The Plough"
(5:14, 11.93mb)
Track 9.
Neil Hannon comes from the kind of school of songwriting in which you write lyrics full of wit, forming character portraits with incidental social criticism, with kind-of-theatrical music hall melodies. An English Randy Newman, perhaps. Hannon's voice is reminiscent of Scott Walker's; it's oh so English, clipped and ascerbic, but with overtones of mournfulness and playfulness in turn. "Victory For The Comic Muse" was apparently recorded quickly, using old-style tape - but who really cares! It sounds great; the Divine Comedy in the past have sounded a little stilted and plastic due to the production style.
Lyrically, the album mostly targets the upper classes, from the female celeb of "Diva Lady" to the accountant of "The Plough" to the album's centerpiece, "A Lady Of A Certain Age", where the disgust drips from his voice as he details the utter vacuousness of the life of an aging socialite. The sweetest song on the album is "Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World" - I had assumed from the title that the song would detail what Arthur C. got up to in Sri Lanka with little boys - but instead the song is a sweet love song; the narrator is saying that women are a mystery that should be explained on a TV show called "Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World" - but despite his lack of understanding of women, he - aww! - still loves her mystifying feminine behaviour.
The opener, "To Die A Virgin", is the funniest song of the year. The lyrical conceit is that the narrator does not wish the song-name upon himself. His girlfriend had promised, on their first date, that she would let him deflower her as his birthday present. "Hooray, it's my birthday!" he sings in the first verse. The best lyric in the song, though, is the narrator trying to convince the girlfriend to honour her promise about the birthday; "with all the bombs and the bird flu/ we're probably gonna be dead soon." (That would work on how many of you ladies?) All this over a sort of musical amalgamation of 70s glam-rock and broadway sleaze which somehow seems entirely suited to the topic matter.
"The Plough", later in the album, is nowhere near as funny as "To Die A Virgin", but there's a certain something about that song that catches my heart. It could be a song from a broadway musical, in its tone, melody, sense of melodrama, and instrumentation. A song about a man who becomes disillusioned with his accountancy firm because of their embezzling funds, which eventually leads to him assassinating the police commissioner. It is a ridiculous and surreal story in a bunch of ways. But there's a heart to this song, which somehow emerges through the silliness. The song is about the difficulty of fitting into a fickle world obsessed with surfaces, full of people who gloss over complex issues and try to find easy answers.
The Divine Comedy. Victory For The Comic Muse
Parlophone/EMI Records.
"To Die A Virgin"
(3:40, 8.73mb)
Track 1.
"The Plough"
(5:14, 11.93mb)
Track 9.
Neil Hannon comes from the kind of school of songwriting in which you write lyrics full of wit, forming character portraits with incidental social criticism, with kind-of-theatrical music hall melodies. An English Randy Newman, perhaps. Hannon's voice is reminiscent of Scott Walker's; it's oh so English, clipped and ascerbic, but with overtones of mournfulness and playfulness in turn. "Victory For The Comic Muse" was apparently recorded quickly, using old-style tape - but who really cares! It sounds great; the Divine Comedy in the past have sounded a little stilted and plastic due to the production style.
Lyrically, the album mostly targets the upper classes, from the female celeb of "Diva Lady" to the accountant of "The Plough" to the album's centerpiece, "A Lady Of A Certain Age", where the disgust drips from his voice as he details the utter vacuousness of the life of an aging socialite. The sweetest song on the album is "Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World" - I had assumed from the title that the song would detail what Arthur C. got up to in Sri Lanka with little boys - but instead the song is a sweet love song; the narrator is saying that women are a mystery that should be explained on a TV show called "Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World" - but despite his lack of understanding of women, he - aww! - still loves her mystifying feminine behaviour.
The opener, "To Die A Virgin", is the funniest song of the year. The lyrical conceit is that the narrator does not wish the song-name upon himself. His girlfriend had promised, on their first date, that she would let him deflower her as his birthday present. "Hooray, it's my birthday!" he sings in the first verse. The best lyric in the song, though, is the narrator trying to convince the girlfriend to honour her promise about the birthday; "with all the bombs and the bird flu/ we're probably gonna be dead soon." (That would work on how many of you ladies?) All this over a sort of musical amalgamation of 70s glam-rock and broadway sleaze which somehow seems entirely suited to the topic matter.
"The Plough", later in the album, is nowhere near as funny as "To Die A Virgin", but there's a certain something about that song that catches my heart. It could be a song from a broadway musical, in its tone, melody, sense of melodrama, and instrumentation. A song about a man who becomes disillusioned with his accountancy firm because of their embezzling funds, which eventually leads to him assassinating the police commissioner. It is a ridiculous and surreal story in a bunch of ways. But there's a heart to this song, which somehow emerges through the silliness. The song is about the difficulty of fitting into a fickle world obsessed with surfaces, full of people who gloss over complex issues and try to find easy answers.
