|
|
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Do you remember the way it used to be?", 11 Sep 2003
“Concept album” … the phrase is enough to make you shiver and brings to mind self-important, over-blown artists disappearing up their own nether-regions in an epic quest to produce the “ultimate” record.Fortunately, “Promenade” is a concept album that suffers from none of these things. Loosely built around a love story that is Enid Blyton in feel, epic in scope and even Greek in its hint of tragedy, it’s as if The Famous Five were let loose in a music school and came up with a haphazard masterpiece. This is pure joyous pop music, but from a bygone era – this is pop at it’s best, in the sense that “pop” meant before it referred to manufactured pap: short, catchy, tuneful, hummable, glorious songs; songs that you can play to your children or grandparents without shame; songs that stay in your mind and make your life richer by their mere existence. There’s strings, there’s pianos, there’s arty film quotes; there’s “quintessentially English” phrases (“If it ain't some young Turk in search of a fight”); there’s charmingly inoffensive jingoism (“There'll aaaalllwaaays be an England (oh yes there will)”); there’s yearning for the lost innocence of childhood that feels like a message from a pre-politically correct, paedophile-obsessed era (The Summerhouse - “Daring escapes at midnight / And costume-less babes at dawn. / You were only nine years old / And I was barely ten”); there’s a list of famous authors, a homily to classic Europe cinema (“when those lights go out all over Europe / I forget about old Hollywood / 'Cos Doris Day could never make me cheer up / Quite the way those French girls always could”) and a paean to drinking (“We'll drink beyond the boundaries of sense! / We'll drink 'til we start to see lovely pink elephants”); there’s brains, there’s wit, there’s irony, there’s substance, there’s gentle humour, there’s reflection, there’s charm; it’s by turn flippant, winsome, exuberant and dashing; at times it even feels like we’re in a Jane Austen costume drama (Neptune’s Daughter - “When the last course has been consumed / They withdraw to the drawing room”) but at no point does this jumble feel pretentious, too deliberate or over-hammed. If only falling in love felt like listening to this winning, wonderful, momentous record. Treasure it and never let it go.
|
~ The Divine Comedy
~ The Divine Comedy
~ The Divine Comedy
~ The Divine Comedy
~ The Divine Comedy
With an Amazon.co.uk Gift Certificate, you can get them what they want (even if you don't know what that is). 
Amazon Home