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We just want to go to a stately home built in the Georgian style
In lesser catastrophes than the general planet, I have been noticing over the last eight months that while the majority of my audio transferred successfully from the archival hard drive that was for fourteen years my beloved Bertie Owen, certain artists seem to have gone incompletely and inexplicably missing, generally to be discovered by trying to cue up a track which no longer exists on my computer, which is what happened last night with Neil Hannon. Of the six albums by the Divine Comedy that I used to own along with a handful of random tracks and singles, the sole full-length survivors are Promenade (1994) and Bang Goes the Knighthood (2010), which are neither chronologically nor alphabetically even next to one another. The consolation lining is that at least I didn't lose one of my favorite songs which can be found on the latter, "Assume the Perpendicular." Like much of its composer's catalogue, it's a chamber-pop character sketch, wittily written and performed with a sincere straight face: trying to fix its position on the irony slider is pointless. "Slip on your Barbour jacket, jump in my old MG" sets the class bracket of its band of day-trippers, while the tenor of their conversation is nailed with equal concision by the architectural divisions of "Lavinia loves the lintels, Anna the architraves / Ben's impressed by the buttresses thrust up the chapel nave." Aside from the narrator who thought of that last line and delivers it with cheekily Coward-esque crispness, none of these people sounds like the most exciting company for a heritage day out with their diffident intentions to "make complimentary sounds and talk about nothing in particular." And yet as the song catchily progresses, these pretentious characters find themselves falling into the fun of their excursion, meandering the hedge maze, bouncing on historical beds, swinging around the library's railed ladders, and the music loosens right up along with them, the neat hand-clapped piano joined first by a brisk roll of drums and then a flourish of brass that unreel from a marching tattoo into a loose-jointed jam, until by the time a music-hallish banjo has ricky-tickied in on the action, the self-conscious distance of the original chorus has turned into "wild ecstatic sounds" and everybody including the listener is having a wonderful time tearing around this stately home where playing at aristocracy has given way to goofing off. It all ends in a little twiddle of electronica like a punch line. It doesn't really matter if it's sending up the sightseers who aren't even interested in the cider in Somerset, what it feels like as it winds down from that explosive high of exploration is a genuine invitation that I can play twenty times in a row, even if my closest examples of the Georgian style are not so much country houses as random historical registers and the occasional Revolutionary museum that I pass on the way to my parents or a supermarket.
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I have books that happened to! Sympathies.
Of course! Hope Is A Liar, Cinematic, 3 o'clock in the morning, Love and Death in the Afternoon, Winter come summer, Steamin'.
These are great! I'd heard "Cinematic" without knowing whose it was, but none of the others. They do sound like they share a common ancestor with the Divine Comedy. Thank you!
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Sadly, so do I, it's the worst! And I think Jack might have suffered that same fate, because I couldn't find them among my Cds when I looked quickly this morning. It's annoying, but I guess it fits right in with this entry?
You're welcome! It's so cool that you'd heard of them before! They were one of my random but lucky finds at the discount bin of the record shop during the early 2000s. the cover of their second album caught my eye, and to this day I still think that it looks a bit like Alain Delon in Samourai! XD I really enjoyed their music and its Scott Walker vibe! <3
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I didn't want it to be contagious!
It's so cool that you'd heard of them before!
I am pretty sure it was the product of local college radio!
the cover of their second album caught my eye, and to this day I still think that it looks a bit like Alain Delon in Samourai!
I had to look up the cover, but yes! What a fantastic shot. If that was their singer-songwriter, neo-noir really missed out on him.
(I miss discount bins of record shops and carrels outside used book stores. I too have picked up some amazing finds there.)