Absent Friends - The Divine Comedy [2004]
Beautiful; intelligent; haunting.
After his decision to 'go straight' with Regeneration, it was with open arms that I welcomed the real Neil Hannon back to the stage. He's complained before that Regeneration is an underrated album, but it's completely the other way round. Fans love it. Critics love it. And it's fucking awful.
I agree the overblown scores and comedy sound effects of Fin de Siècle et al undermine Hannon's brilliant, clever, gently comic lyrics, but Regeneration made the music boring and the lyrics worse. There's a song in which he lists things he's lost. The whole album's neither funny nor deep. It's horrific.
The superb Absent Friends, then, made me breathe such a sigh of relief I blew away a small child.
But the thing to remember about Neil Hannon as a lyricist is that he's actually bloody miserable. Tell anyone you're a Divine Comedy fan and they sing National Express at you (it's really annoying); they don't know he's made nine albums, each more depressing than the last.
And in Absent Friends, he found the music to fit the words. To fully express every minutiae of sadness in its core, a full orchestra with string-led melodies are used to perfection, although Hannon still lacked the confidence to really pull off his massive orchestral gigs at the Royal Albert Hall and the Palladium (though the second half and encore of the latter is excellent).
But in Absent Friends, it's a perfect fit - chamber pop at its very best. Case in point: Sticks And Stones, with its stabbing cello and sweeping violins. The song absolutely soars. It's also hard to dislike a song that begins, "You and I go together like the molar and the drill." The title track is another cracker, uplifting and melancholy at the same time.
Hannon knows when to show restraint with his instruments, though: My Imaginary Friend is a quiet, friendly, banjo-led ditty very much in the middle of the road, but it's so utterly lovely you'd be a bastard to hate it.
The same goes for album closer Charmed Life, which, being a sugary sweet tribute to his young daughter, should by all rights be awful. But it's not. So there.
Let's not go around thinking this is happy happy fun times though. Leaving Today, about leaving his family behind, is a heartbreaker of pure misery. Musically, it's no less than haunting. Lyrically: "So suddenly awake," it begins. "No light through yonder window breaks. No crowing cock; just my old clock... "
Our Mutual Friend - definite emphasis on friends in this album - is the true standout, however. Listen to it. From the opening confession, "No matter how I try I just can't get her out of my mind" to its shattering conclusion (via the lovely throwaway line, "I woke up the next day all alone but for a headache), it involves you completely, and every individual line is perfect. The scene is so beautifully set, it's impossible not to feel for the speaker when it closes.
Sad, observant and wryly comic, Absent Friends is the album to give Divine Comedy fans hope. Can't wait for the new album.
Sorry, that was a terrible review of a wonderful record. Please listen to at least a bit of it. Merry Christmas! I'll be back with #6 on Boxing Day. Until then, here's a present, made around the release of this album:
Spotify link.