Number 13, unlucky for some, but seemingly not for Neil Hannon, the Derry songwriter behind The Divine Comedy. Having worked on motion pictures soundtracks for Lola and Wonka in recent years, Hannon returns to his own world of imagination completely reinvigorated for The Divine Comedy’s 13th instalment, Rainy Sunday Afternoon, an album of nostalgia, loss, death, grief and sadness served with Hannon’s signature lush melodic sensibilities and witty lyrical intricacies.
‘Achilles’ is a jaunty riff on Edwardian poet Patrick Shawn-Stewart’s “Achilles in the Trench” mixing Homer’s Iliad with the horrors of World War I warfare set against ‘Get A Gun’ style Steely Dan rhythm guitar and spaghetti western fretwork. It’s a rousing and deceptively jubilant affair underpinned by inevitability of death, showcasing Hannon’s deft hand as a composer.
‘The Last Time I Saw The Old Man’ is a devastating symphonic ballad about Hannon’s late father succumbing to the ravages of Alzheimer’s disease. It’s a hauntingly beautiful affair and easily one of the best compositions of Hannon’s 30+ year career. It’s a remarkably candid portrait of such an intimate and harrowing experience and Hannon should be praised for letting us bare witness to his pain in a situation that is tragically all too common. If you’ve lost a parent, it will hit you like a tonne of remembrance cards.
Now middle-aged and having lost his father, Hannon contemplates his own mortality on ‘The Man Who Turned into a Chair’ as he ponders what’s next, now that the glass is more empty than full, but as we discover on ‘I Want You’, there’s still room for romance in a velvety ballad with croon set to 11 harking back to his work on A Short Album About Love.
The album’s titular track ‘Rainy Sunday Afternoon’ mixes the micro with the macro as Hannon considers the rise of authoritarianism in global politics as he tries to navigate his way through a domestic. He hopes the planet will come to its senses before wisely conceding that the fight was his fault after all. Contemplating life further still, nostalgia arrives on the heartwarming ‘All The Pretty Lights’ with Hannon celebrating “the terror and excitement” of Christmases long past.
Hannon returns to politics, poking fun at America, first with the theatrical glam rock of ‘Down The Rabbit Hole’ and then on the Rat Pack-tinged ‘Mar-a-Lago by The Sea’, which places Donald Trump in prison, yearning for the days when he pissed in golden toilets, swapped his wife for beauty queens and dined with fascists.
It’s no coincidence then that the Bruce Springsteen-esque slow burn of ‘The Heart is a Lonely Hunter’ follows like a palate cleanser for the soul, reminding us that no matter how bad things seem there’s still hope.
With the album having started with Neil Hannon dealing with the loss of his father, it ends with on an upbeat note with him celebrating his relationship with his daughter on ‘Invisible Thread’, letting her know that no matter what happens, he’ll always be there for her while he’s alive and possibly afterwards.
Neil Hannon is no longer the man who wrote Casanova; frankly, it would be very sad if he was. Rainy Sunday Afternoon finds him undoing his belt and embracing middle age in the most splendid way.