Sumptuously charming, filled with melancholy, wit, gorgeous melodies and songwriting, Neil Hannon and co bring a 13th LP of particularly tender, moving and humorous chamber pop with a vaudevillian feel, and running theme of time passing and mutability, all performed with classic panache, and occasionally reminiscent of Scott Walker, Randy Newman and Anthony Newley. That running theme is particularly poignant on a beautiful, heartbreaking single about Hannon’s now departed father, The Last Time I Saw The Old Man - “He was moving very slowly / And he didn't seem to know me / His hands seemed so fragile and gray / I was worried I might break them / Showed him pictures but he didn't understand.” The opening number Achilles and its heel reference also refers to death and vulnerability, and was inspired by the opening lines of Patrick Shaw-Stewart’s 1915 First World War poem, Achilles in the Trench: “I saw a man this morning who did not wish to die.”
Yet there are many lighter notes on this album, with a humorous tale of personal inertia in The Man Who Turned Into A Chair, or the wonderfully wicked humour of Mar-A-Lago By The Sea, fabulous piece of gentle bossa nova-style satire getting, a self-absorbed wistful from the point of view of an ageing US president, with reference to his famous luxury home, a place of: “All the sycophants and narcs / All the cannibals and sharks / A secluded paradise / Of spies and cypress trees / Mar-a-Lago by the sea / Cheating losers on the greens/ Swapping wives for beauty queens/ Making turgid wedding speeches/ Entertaining fascist leeches … Mar-a-Lago, how I miss / The golden johns in which I pissed / All that ostentatious wealth / The paintings of myself / When I was young and free.” The beautiful title track highlights precious moments of reflection when the narrator reconsiders his role in a silly lovers’ tiff, with hope also that “I wonder if one day / The doom and gloom will disappear / And the men who rule by fear / Will realise the / Error of their ways.” The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter is another gem of a melody, this time pondering on images of riding on a windswept, desolate landscape and how “life is just a shadow play”. But perhaps the very best comes last in the wonderfully warm, a deliciously tender, Invisible Thread, bittersweet farewell to offspring leaving home: “I used to think that no one / Could keep you safe but me / That only I could guide you/ Through life's crazy tapestry/ But now you're guiding me,” with the refrain that “There will always be / An invisible thread / Between you and me.” One of the Hannon’s best in years, filled with perfect balance of story, wit, emotion, and absolutely stunning melodies, beautifully arranged and delivered to perfection. Out on Divine Comedy Records.
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