A Short Album About Love

This is the album which sustained me through my second year at university. It means a great deal to me and provokes a lot of very happy memories.
And what an album it is! Seven hauntingly beautiful love songs, recorded live (without an audience) at London's Shepherds Bush Empire with a full orchestra. Neil Hannon's wry lyrics and smooth-as-chocolate voice melt the heart with several different perspectives on the experience of love.
Many have made the error of assuming Hannon to be nothing more than a purveyor of lightweight comic pastiche. To make that assumption is to miss the point entirely - listen more closely and you will find that beneath Hannon's sardonic wit beats the heart of a true romantic poet and articulate social commentator.
"In Search of Happiness" kicks things off in an appropriately upbeat manner - Hannon stands back and lets the orchestra do most of the talking here, and Joby Talbot's lush arrangement gives the song a Lloyd-Webber-esque feel.
The single "Everybody Knows (Except You)" finds Hannon, in his customary dry way, opening his heart to the object of his unrequited love. He made a small boy cry, you know. The pedantic nit-picker in me would point out that that roughly half-way through the song, Hannon cries "You know I love you baby!", when the whole point of the song is that his "baby" doesn't know... but who am I to make an issue of it?!
The heartfelt "Somebody" changes the tone altogether. "I need to be someone's somebody", he sings devastatingly. Check out the howling guitar feedback in the background during the extended orchestra play-out... it reflects the pained tone of the lyrics and vocal perfectly.
"If" is cleverly deceptive, deliberately wrong-footing the listener in the guise of a beautiful, seemingly poignant and sincere declaration of undying love and loyalty, until the dark twist at the end reveals Hannon's true intent.
"If I Were You (I'd Be Through With Me)" finds Hannon marvelling at a lover for choosing him and staying with him, warts and all. The orchestra swells magnificently during the final chorus to wonderful effect... make sure you turn it right up! Curiously, when I saw the band play what was to be one of their final gigs as a seven-piece at Brixton Academy in October 2001, Hannon introduced this song as being about "...being in love with a lesbian, and knowing that you'll never be a lesbian..." Maybe he was explaining a deeper meaning to the song, maybe he was having a bit of a laugh... maybe I've missed the point!
"Timewatching" is a re-recorded version of a track from "Liberation", The Divine Comedy's first album. It's much improved here, more mellow in its performance and with a stronger string arrangement.
"I'm All You Need" is a fitting closing track. The opening chords have "finale" written all over them, the song starting gently as Hannon pleads with his heroine to stop wasting her time with shallow idiots and realise that... well, the title says it all. The orchestra kicks in to give the chorus a real "oomph!", and takes centre-stage for a final flourish before returning the song to its' gentle beginning, fading out appropriately to the album's conclusion.
Neil Hannon is a sickeningly talented individual - multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, lyricist of extraordinary articulacy, imagination and biting wit... and that voice! How such a small, scrawny, pasty-looking man, who surely must always have been picked last for the football team in school PE lessons, can produce such a powerful voice, possessed of such beauty, clarity and expression, is one of nature's mysteries. Good on him.
Joby Talbot (keyboards) also deserves praise. His orchestral arrangements complement the songs perfectly, providing a wonderful backdrop and coming to the fore when necessary without ever being overbearing. Many bands have tried, with varying degrees of success, to integrate themselves with an orchestra. This is an unqualified success. It grabs you by the heart and makes it soar (not sore!). And Hannon and Talbot have the wisdom not to plough the same field for the sake of an easy life, as the radically different "Regeneration" album from 2001, with its band-orientated sound and stripped-down arrangments shows.
I cannot recommend this album highly enough. It is 34 minutes of pure, heartfelt beauty which will touch your soul and reassure you that amidst the plethora of manufactured, soulless pop stars constantly rammed down our throats, there are true artists with a great deal to move us and stir our souls.

A Short Album About Love was Neil Hannon's immediate follow up to the somewhat pompous, almost-rock-opera Casanova; which saw the format shift from lyrical, light-hearted tales of love and autumnal woe of previous records towards the darker, more socially aware concerns of albums like Fin De Siècle and the underrated Regeneration. The sound remains the same, with Hannon commandeering a full, 30-piece orchestra, as well as working alongside the same self-assembled band that would contribute to the two Divine Comedy albums that followed; giving us the repeat line-up of regular collaborators Joby and Ivor Talbot, Pinkie Bates, bandleader Chris Austen and new producer Jon Jacobs, all of whom help to create a swooning, swinging musical backing for Hannon to sing his tales of romance, lost and found.

The record is gloriously performed and produced, using live recording techniques to capture Neil and the band in a completely full-on mode; brimming with energy and exploding with a full-bodied bombast that brings to mind the oft-mentioned likes Scott Walker and Jacques Brel. The swagger and bravado of the orchestration (which is packed with shimmering horns and sorrowful strings) is used to perfectly offset the shades of downbeat melancholia that infuses many of Hannon's wordy lyrics; drawing more on the kind of bleak-desperation and kitchen sink humour made famous by the likes of The Beatles or The Smiths than anything approaching the clean, pop sophistication of Burt Bacharach and Hal David, etc. Some would argue that the concept is far too strange and self-indulgent to work; producing a record of downbeat love-ballads, live and with a full orchestra, but no audience - but as far as I'm concerned, it is pulled off impeccably well by Hannon and his band of merry-musicians. The mood is cohesive in its lulled detachment; with Hannon brimming with emotional-heartache and shimmering-pomp as he once again essays the role of the crooner to great effect. The album opens with the unassuming In Pursuit of Happiness, which many consider to be one of Hannon's best compositions, but for me, it's merely a sumptuous prelude to the six storming tracks that follow...

Everybody Knows (Except You) for example is classic Divine Comedy, and acts as a great introduction to the themes of the record as a whole. As a song, it is certainly a composition cut from the same cloth as some of the songs from 1996's Casanova such as Something for the Weekend or the Frog Princess, with Hannon juxtaposing morose innocence with a wailing libido as he metaphorically confesses his love to the unrequited object of his affections. Next track Someone takes things down a notch, drawing parallels with something approaching Becoming More Like Alfie, with Neil lamenting the kind of guys that get the girls with some great brass orchestration and those always devilishly witty lyrics. Meanwhile, If... has autumnal-like orchestration and lyrics that reference both the Kipling poem and one of Hannon's finest musical moments, that being My Lovely Horse from TV's Father Ted ("...if you were a horse I could ride you through the fields at dawn, through the day until the day was gone, I could sing about you in my songs, as we rode away into the setting sun").

This leads us perfectly into more of that sublime desperation with If I Were You (I'd be through with me), which has wonderful story book lyrics that brim with emotion; with Neil H hopelessly crooning the central refrain, "if I were you I'd ride away, to a pasture new where I could graze, on the green, green grass of virgin country, I'd live real fast and die real young..." before continuing with the kind of bitterness usually reserved for Luke Haines or Elvis Costello, with the closing lines "You see if I were you I'd end my days, in a field of stupid sheep just grazing, the grass so succulent and sweet... If I were you I'd be through with me". Meanwhile, the two final songs, Timewatching (a cover of an earlier DC song from the classic debut Liberation) and the belting and bombastic I'm All You Need, bring the album to a close perfectly.

For me, A Short Album about Love is one of the great records of the last decade, and although it lacks the beautiful, reflective whimsy of Hannon's all-time masterpiece Promenade (one of the greatest records of all-time, in my opinion), it's certainly up there with Liberation, Fin De Siècle and the recent Absent Friends. This is a joyous collection of full-blooded love-songs shot through with a real sense of heartache and performed by an ensemble of musicians who know a thing or to about creating perfect pop. Re-issue it now please, someone?

A Short Album About Love is a great title for The Divine Comedys fifth album as it is , quite literally a short album ( It clocks in at 31.58) and every song is about love in all it,s trials tribulations and triumphs. What the album title doesn,t convey is quite how magnificently opulent, stirring, witty and downright enjoyable the album is.

The songs are framed by superbly fluid orchestral arrangements-recorded in New York and recorded live - and sung with real relish by Neil Hammond in his vibrant baritone. What really sets this album apart is Hannon,s exemplary song-writing. There are seven songs on the album and everyone is an absolute masterpiece of drama, fervent emotion, and consummate literacy.

"Everybody Knows (Except You)" is the only song off the album released as a single ,though i feel with the possible exception of the comparatively sedate "Timewatching " -a song from "Liberation" reworked , every song on the album could have been . A glorious paean to unrequited love it revels in lines like " I told the passers by/ I made a small boy cry/ But I,ll get through to you/ If it,s the last thing that i do". Opening track "The Pursuit Of Happiness" has tippling medieval style piano/keyboards and tells us that "I'm not the type to fall in love without good reason" though you suspect maybe he is Incidentally the middle eight was used as the theme for "Tomorrows World" for a short period. "Someone", a plaintive plea for love, has volumous and portentous strings ebbing and fluxing ,counterpoint guitar feedback and one of Hannon,s strongest vocal performances.

"If" changes the tone somewhat with a darker sting in the tail of the song, though some of the lyrics are priceless. " If you were a horse I,d clean the crap out of your stable/ And never once complain ". My favourite is the sublime "If I Were You(I,d be Through With Me)" a song about the idealisation of love where the orchestra blossoms magnificently and Hannon intones deadpan " If I were you I wouldn't need to always read the magazines that I do / That make me blue!". Final track "I,m All You Need" is a fitting conclusion with Hannon exhorting over juddering strings that he is the best option on offer though the lyrics are again slightly arch "Don,t look a horse in the mouth /Don,t let a frog get you down/Dragging you round like a dog on lead".

I never ever tire of listening to this album. Anytime that a song off it comes on my MP3 player is likely to be the highlight of the day (I lead a fairly dull sad existence it must be stressed)Not only is A Short Album About Love an artistic triumph it,s an immensely enjoyable one. It stirs the heart and the head at the same time .It will have you whistling and weeping "..an oddly ignored classic.