More about: The Divine Comedy

I've always had a sneaky admiration for Neil Hannon. After dismissing the earliest shambling indie incarnation of The Divine Comedy in favour of orchestral pop, wide-eyed ambition and a total disregard for his own limitations have propelled him through a career littered with failures and mistakes, but with enough gems to make perseverance worthwhile. He appeared to come off the rails with 1998's Fin de Siecle, and the ugly Britpop hangover that was "National Express", a song so smug it was hard to believe it was penned by the same man who sung the wonderful "Tonight We Fly" only a few years earlier. His last album, Regeneration, did little to reclaim fans of Promenade and Casanova, lacking as it was the swirling orchestra and impish humour of those earlier albums.

For 'Absent Friends', Hannon appears to have had a re-think. Not for the first time in his career, he's sacked the whole band (for a mild-mannered guy, he's pretty ruthless), and the album is drenched in elegant strings which suggest Hannon is boldly pursuing the vision of his hero, Scott Walker. So many moments on this record are pure Scott, you wonder if it might not be better titled Neil 8. But, though 'Leaving Today' veers perilously close to pastiche, this is never a mere homage. Hannon has way too much class for that.

There's a sense that, with 'Absent Friends', he's finally reached the place he always wanted to be. This is a bewitching album, lyrically insightful and beautifully arranged. "Our Mutual Friend" depicts the excitement of new love so vividly that you feel as crushed as the narrator when things turn sour. The spiky humour of previous albums is still present in "The Happy Goth", but the condescending tone is replaced by a warm acceptance. The knowing croon is gone. Instead, he sings with a bald honesty which gets under the skin in just the way Scott does. Sure, the tone isn’t as pure, but the intention is. Ending on an unashamedly sentimental note, "Charmed Life", a love song to his first born child, “ Neil Hannon has made an album which finally does justice to his talent and ambition.

Issue Two of the Gigwise Print magazine is on sale now! Buy it here.

More about: The Divine Comedy