Birthdays -
ruddy marvellous, aren’t they? Your birthday’s the one day of the year when
it’s all about you, attention seeking behaviour is positively encouraged, and you’re
allowed to wear badges without looking like an overgrown Boy Scout.
And if
you’ve got some completely arbitrary numerical milestone to celebrate, you can
make an even bigger deal out of it by hiring somewhere out for the evening,
having a load of your adoring fans pay money to come along, and make them
listen to you sing the songs you want to sing all night whilst you get steadily
more blotto.
But enough
about my 34th birthday party last weekend; apparently Neil Hannon
thought this was such a good idea that he stole it wholesale for an evening of
music and merriment at the Royal Festival Hall this week which I was lucky
enough to attend.
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| Welcome to another selection of terrible iPhone photos... still, they're mine. |
Arriving at
the Festival Hall for a Divine Comedy gig is a slightly sobering experience, in
all honesty. The last time this happened was back in 1997, and the gig itself
ranks in my top 5 of all time – the full Divine Comedy band plus a massive
orchestra, playing an amazing setlist of early classics (and “Mr Blue Sky”).
However, I don’t know if you’ve ever booked tickets for a gig with a partner
and then managed to break up with them before the event rolled around, but take
it from me: find someone else to go with.
The evening began with awkward drinks during
which I looked at the floor more than my ex whilst she asked me why I’d broken
up with her, followed by me trying to turn ‘because I met someone else’ into a positive thing. A career in politics was officially off
the cards at this point. Still, after we’d given up on that, we went for a
wander round the foyer and bumped into various members of the band (as was at
the time), and she confirmed my choice to move on by not only failing to
recognise Joby Talbot and Bryan Mills but not even knowing who they were when I
was all excited afterwards. My guilt was suitably assuaged as you can tell by
the fact that I’ve forgotten all about this sorry tale and never mention it.
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| The old band... |
Anyway,
with only one member in The Divine Comedy this decade, there are fewer exciting
people to be spotted in the foyer this time around (sadly I fail to bump into
Graham Linehan – well, sadly for me, I doubt he wants to hear about how much I
laugh every time I see one particular Big Train sketch.) Being alone, due to
poor Karin being ill, and potentially interested Twitter followers failing to
spot my spare ticket offer, there’s nothing to be done but grab a Meantime IPA
and take my seat for the evening’s fun – via the ushers who are handing out
party hats (declined for fear of chronic ‘hat hair’) and party blowers (very
much accepted.)
Luckily, I
don’t have too long to wait before the room goes dark for the most excellent…
…fronted by
Irish-Jeff-Lynne and cuddly giant Thomas Walsh, who arrives on stage to
sporadic buzzing from the auditorium and thanks us for bringing our kazoos.
There’s a few minutes of fiddling with guitars and other equipment, during
which he decides that we all sound like The Clangers, and then we’re off, with
‘Be My Friend’, the first of several tracks from this year’s excellent new
album ‘The Olympus Sound’.
It’s a nice
start to the evening, with Beatles/Beach Boys/ELO-esque harmonies perfectly
nailed by the other band members and a confident lead from Thomas. Ahhh, I’d
hoped to get through these couple of paragraphs without using the three letters
O, E and L in any kind of acronym, but heck, it’s the closest frame of
reference for much of the material tonight, and let’s be honest, when you walk
on stage with a guitar featuring a massive sticker with the letters DLM (for
Duckworth-Lewis Method, the ‘other band’ of Messrs Walsh and Hannon) arranged
in a parody of the front cover of ‘A New World Record’, you’re kind of asking
for it. (By the way, anyone know where I can get one of these stickers? I
pretty much want one more than anything right now…)
The band
are tight, Thomas is a great frontman, and they bring to life the songs from
‘Olympus Sound’ (which is going to make this year’s top 10 list) – so I can
only assume they do the same to the songs I’m not familiar with, including the
“massive flop single ” ‘It’s Nice to be Nice’, ‘Apples’, and ‘The Finer Things
in Life’(or ‘Finer Tings’, as Thomas sings in his best Irish.) This last song
is kindly dedicated to uber-DC fan Paula, who Thomas is unsurprised to find is
present. I think the question should be, if a Divine Comedy-related event
happens and Paula is not there to hear it, does it actually make a sound?
There’s
also a touching moment when ‘Dear Belinda’ segues into a good chunk of Paul
McCartney’s ‘My Love’, played tonight in tribute to Wings guitarist Henry
McCullough who’s been taken ill today (but happily not died, as reported on
Irish radio by “gobshites”, as Thomas tells us with disgust.) Then there’s even
a sort of “weight raffle” as we’re all encouraged to guess the weight of the
band in order to win a 10” vinyl of the band’s new EP. “50 stone?”, guesses someone.
“That’s not too far off actually… for me”, says Thomas, prompting the biggest
laugh of the gig.
The
penultimate song sees Neil somewhat incognito in shades and a hat take to the
piano at stage right, to join Thomas for ‘Meeting Mr Miandad’, a song from the
Duckworth-Lewis Method concept album about cricket (sample lyric – “Meeting Mr.
Miandad / Meeting Mr. Miandad/ when we get to Pakistan / in a VW camper van…”,
well I suppose it doesn’t all have to be about foreign cinema and existential
angst.)
And then we end with ‘Answers on a Postcard’, during which Thomas tells us it’s finally time to get out the “kazoos” so we all blow our party blowers furiously for the duration of the instrumental break, nearly hyperventilating and passing out in the process (or maybe that’s just me.)
The band’s
30 minute set has been excellent fun and it goes down a treat with the crowd,
but it’s over all too soon. I make a note to definitely make it to a full gig
next time Pugwash are playing in London.
Pugwash setlist:
Be My Friend
Apples
Finer Things in Life
It’s Nice to be Nice
Dear Belinda/ My Love
Fall Down
Meeting Mr Miandad (with Neil Hannon)
Answers on a Postcard
There’s
then a quick break while the stage is set for…
… or is it
just Neil Hannon? Well, in my last DC review (went down a storm, you should
really read it) I made a case for why Neil has every right to go out on the
road by himself as The Divine Comedy (summary – he wrote all the songs, good
songs are good songs, just buy a ticket) – but I still can’t help but secretly
hope that on the other side of that strategically placed pile of presents at
the back right of the stage there’s a drum kit, and that Joby, Miggy, Bryan,
Ivor and Rob are going to come out halfway through to rock it up on songs from
‘Casanova’, ‘Fin de Siecle’ and ‘Regeneration’. I think we all know that doesn’t happen – but
still, read on for something equally good in a very different way.
Neil takes
the stage to some fittingly silly piano music, and to a cacophony of party
blowers (somehow he seems as ignorant of this development as Thomas), before
sitting down at the piano to sing Happy Birthday to himself. (“I’m not
forty-one / I’m not forty-three/ Happy birthday dear Neil / Happy Birthday to me…”)
It’s a
giant party from the off, beginning with a couple of tracks from most recent
album ‘Bang Goes the Knighthood’, during the second of which, Neil manages to
choke on "Joan Miro" before clearing his throat with gin, segueing into ‘It’s
My Party and I’ll cry if I want to’, and introducing his first special guest.
First up is Tom Chaplin from Keane, who seems like an odd guest until Neil
explains that he once did them a favour, reading a poem at one of their gigs,
and that Tom’s here as payment. It will surprise and interest nobody that I was
at that gig, too (one of the first ever at the O2, fact fans.)
I’m
actually a reasonably big Keane fan, though I know many aren’t, but nobody
hearing Tom’s rendition of ‘Love What You Do’ could say that the lad can’t
sing. It’s a more laid back and touching rendition than the album version and
registers reasonably highly on the shiver-o-meter. “You’re much younger than
me, aren’t you?”, says Neil to Tom as he leaves the stage.
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| That's Tom Chaplin from Keane. No, honestly it is. Can't you tell? |
Left to his
own devices (now that would be a great cover for him to do…), Neil goes back to
the “new” stuff for a few songs, including ‘The Complete Banker’, complete with
comedy chipmunk-style sideways glare at an apposite moment. It’s followed by
‘Indie Disco’ during which Neil challenges the audience to clap along better
than last year (apparently we’re successful but frankly how hard is it to clap
in time to something? Talk about setting your sights low.)
And then
it’s time for another special guest – certainly one I wouldn’t have expected ,
as I’m not quite sure what the connection is between Neil and Alison
Moyet. If anything, I’d think he’d want
to keep her well away since she towers over him and makes him look like a
midget. But there’s a welcome trade-off of songs as Neil plays the synth riff
from Yazoo’s ‘Don’t Go’ on piano for Alison to do her diva thang over, before
Alison reciprocates with a powerful reading of ‘Certainty of Chance’.
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| Oh look, that's almost vaguely recognisable as Alison Moyet! |
Neil seems genuinely in awe as Alison makes
her way into the wings, but it doesn’t take long for him to remember who this
evening is all about, as he demands that a giant 42 be brought onto the stage
whilst he straps on his guitar for the first time tonight. Evidently what Neil
wants, Neil gets, as a team of stage hands silently push a giant, lit-up birthday-candle
style number 42 onto the rear right of the stage. Take that, Muse…. lasers are
so last week.
The guitar
set is somewhat familiar from last time, although this time the capo-changing
guy during ‘Perfect Lovesong’ is dressed in a Noel Coward smoking jacket and
appears to be halfway through shaving (I decide this is a subtle nod to the
1997 gig when Neil shaved off his legendary beard during the interval – even
though it clearly isn't. ) The last song in this little section is a nice
audience-singalong which turns into an audience blow-along as the entire crowd
attempts to recreate the theme tune to “Father Ted” on party blowers. Having
once played a wind instrument, I discover that by fashioning a rudimentary
embouchure I can actually play proper notes of my choosing on the blower, and I
like to think that the people sitting around me appreciate my actual recreation
of the solo – although of course they’re too embarrassed by my superior skills
to say so.
“Look at
all my lovely presents…” says Neil as he makes it back to the piano, before
revealing that the gigantic boxes at the back of the stage are in fact
concealing the real surprise of this evening (duh, we got there a thousand
words ago, Neil - get with it.) Internal cries of “drum kit drum kit drum kit”
eventually give out as the wall of boxes is taken away, reverse-Roger Waters
style, to reveal a string quartet. Well, that’s cool, a string quartet will add
an extra dimension to the sound for the next few song. “As it’s my birthday and
I can do what I want to, I’m going to play a whole album…” – suddenly the penny
drops.
A few weeks
after my previous DC gig, Neil performed at a charity gig in Belfast, where he’d
advertised that he’d be playing one of his albums in its entirety with a string
quartet. I’d been sorely tempted to make the trip but in the end it didn’t work
out for whatever reason and I’ve been fed up about it ever since. “This is
called Promenade”, says Neil, as the widest smile in living memory cracks my
cheeks, my eyes get a little misty, and a quarter of the audience decide it’s
time to go to the bar.
‘Promenade’
was the second Divine Comedy album I heard, after the more immediately
accessible ‘Casanova’ with its clutch of hit singles, and it quickly became one
of my favourite albums of all time, featuring the perfect mix of rock music,
chamber music and Chanson, with everything from list-song par excellence
‘Seafood Song’ (“Octopussy, jellyfishy, dolphin’s an acquired taste…”) to
absolutely chilling piano ballad ‘Ten Seconds to Midnight’. The album deals
with romance, literature, drinking, death, and perhaps rebirth as the
protagonists soar up above the world during the closing ‘Tonight We Fly’
(always guaranteed to uplift and upset in equal measure at the end of the
previous 40 minutes’ emotional rollercoaster.)
There’s
nothing I can say about ‘Promenade’
being performed in its entirety with a string quartet to do it justice. Right
from the opening notes of ‘Bath’, the group have me utterly spellbound to the
exclusion of everything around me, which is lucky given that I’ve been desperately
waiting for an interval to go and relieve myself of those IPAs and have decided
that whatever the next song is I’m going to miss it (clearly now not an
option.)
Quite apart
from the fact that they’re playing one of my top 5 albums of all time, which
frankly should be enough for anyone’s £25, this also means that there are
several songs I’ve never seen performed live by any version of The Divine Comedy.
The aforementioned ‘Seafood Song’ is one of these, as is the absolutely sublime
‘Neptune’s Daughter’, and ‘The Booklovers’ - on record an odd juxtaposition of
solemn chamber music with Neil reading out a list of author’s names, followed
by irreverent impressions of each of them. I’m not convinced it’s Neil’s
favourite moment of tonight, starting as it does with Neil picking the wrong
list of authors to read from, which leads to it being restarted. After the song is done, Neil folds up the lyrics
into a paper aeroplane and throws it into the crowd. “Never playing THAT again!”
In the absence tonight of Sean Hughes, who did most of the impressions on the
record, I’m deeply impressed by a group of hardcore fans sitting somewhere
upstairs who augment the performance by shouting out “Oooh-arrrhhh” and “Never
heard of it…” every so often.
In fact, I
wish I was sitting with those people instead of being amongst people who keep
looking at their watches or getting up to go to the loo. Yes, this section of
the show is not for everyone, featuring some pretty obscure material, like the
spoken word religious rant which is the highlight of ‘Don’t Look Down’, and the
somewhat minimal reverse-arpeggios of ‘Geronimo’ (nearly forgotten completely
until Neil suddenly stops playing the intro to ‘Don’t Look Down’ and some wag
sitting in my seat helpfully shouts “You forgot one!” “Yes, I realised that,
thank you…”)
It’s a
section of the show for the faithful who’ve been there since the early days, for
those who appreciate beauty and intelligence in their music as well as just a
good tune, and for those who want to shed a tear or two during the wonderful
oboe solo in ‘The Summerhouse’ (played tonight on violin). Not that I did that
at all. And mostly, I think, it’s a section for Neil – it is his birthday after
all, in case we didn’t know.
With the
rousing final chords of ‘Tonight We Fly’, the main set comes to a close and
Neil introduces the quartet – Chris, Emma, Jo and Lucy – some of whom have
played live with Neil for decades. It’s not a full-band reunion, but I’ll take
what I can get.
After this
cultural highlight of my life, anything else can only be a disappointment, and
thus the first encore of ‘National Express’ seems like a ridiculous
anti-climax. Who wants to hear a song about jolly hostesses serving crisps and
tea, when we just finished a 40-minute song cycle about life itself? Well, the
rest of the audience, is the answer, as it goes down a treat of course even
though I’m sure I detect the tiniest hint of ‘do I really have to play this
again?’ in Neil’s delivery. Still it is
just one of two songs tonight that I’d consider ‘the hits’ so full marks to him
for not pandering to anyone on his special day.
Before Neil
can start on another song, a young girl (I’m assuming his daughter) wheels on a
trolley with a giant chocolate cake on it, upon which Neil gives her a big kiss
and a cuddle (yes, definitely his daughter), blows out the candles and sticks
his hand right into it to grab a giant fistful and shove it into his mouth,
before throwing a couple more handfuls into the crowd. I hope nobody down the
front is wearing white.
“I don’t
know if I can play this, but unfortunately I have to…” he says after wiping his
chocolatey hands on a towel and settling back down to the piano. We get a tour
of several different chords before he finds the right one (an A Minor suspended
9th over a pedal bass note, apparently) and kicks off ‘To Die a
Virgin’ – a great song in any case but presumably chosen for its inclusion of
the line “Well hooray, it’s my birthday”, although he’d rather not be singing
about the dirty magazines he found under his brother’s bed in front of his
mother, judging by his profuse apologies in the middle.
The evening
ends with a couple of songs from ‘Absent Friends’, firstly ‘Charmed Life’,
which is dedicated to his daughter, his family, friends and seemingly everyone
else bar the kitchen sink, but seems to move him quite a bit with its poignant
lyrics, meaning that his second exit is a quite subdued affair.
But fear
not, he returns quickly to distribute the rest of the cake to the front row
before ‘Our Mutual Friend’, a tale of heartbreak but a fan favourite and one
that earns him a standing ovation and an “I love you Neil!” from several
party-goers. “I’ve no idea why,” he says in his usual modest fashion, before
thanking us all for putting up with him all these years.
If you read
my last review, you’ll have picked up on how self-deprecating Neil was
throughout the whole thing, apologising for mistakes in advance, messing up and
making light of it – tonight, there’s none of that (well, only for comedy
reasons). He plays with confidence, sings beautifully when he’s not choking on
cake, and doesn’t apologise nearly half as much. Tonight, it’s all about him
and his music, and he finally seems happy in this role - I’m extremely pleased
for him as nobody deserves it more.
After all,
it is his birthday.
The Divine Comedy Setlist:
Happy Birthday
Assume the Perpendicular
The Lost Art of Conversation
Love What You Do (with Tom Chaplin)
Bang Goes the Knighthood
The Complete Banker
At the Indie Disco
Don’t Go (with Alison Moyet)
The Certainty of Chance (with Alison Moyet)
Perfect Lovesong
A Lady of a Certain Age
Songs of Love
Promenade:
Bath
Going Downhill Fast
The Booklovers
A Seafood Song
Geronimo
Don’t Look Down
When the Lights Go out All Over Europe
The Summerhouse
Neptune’s Daughter
A Drinking Song
Ten Seconds to Midnight
Tonight We Fly
National Express
To Die a Virgin
Charmed Life
Our Mutual Friend
