In this week’s Noise Annoys, David Roy speaks to Divine Comedy leader Neil Hannon about recording at Abbey Road, new Irish dates and celebrating his late father in song
“I’M AT home, in bed,” purrs Neil Hannon as our Zoom call connects to reveal the man behind saucy pop hits like Something For The Weekend and Generation Sex reclining leisurely against his headboard.
Now, before you get too excited, there are three important things to note:
1) He’s fully clothed.
2) This ‘intimate’ choice of interview location was based entirely on practical matters.
3) He’s not actually ‘in’ bed.
“Well, I’m ‘on’ bed,” clarifies Hannon as he prepares to tell us all about the forthcoming Divine Comedy album, Rainy Sunday Afternoon.
“I like to be as far away from barking dogs as possible for interviews. Yeah, so this is it.”
So it goes when you are a pop star cohabiting with rescue dogs: the four-legged friends live alongside Hannon and his wife, fellow musician Cathy Davey, in their rural Co Kildare farmhouse.
There are also plenty more animals in the mix at the Hannon-Daveys just over the fence at the neighbouring My Lovely Horse Animal Rescue (named, of course, for the classic comedy tune Hannon helped write for Father Ted), a charitable concern co-founded by Davey and where the Divine Comedy man serves as patron.
Happily, no pets or other rescue animals intrude upon our conversation as we discuss the important matter of the latest Divine Comedy single, The Last Time I Saw The Old Man – although it seems some of them were present at the very moment inspiration struck its creator.
As its title indicates, this wonderfully moody and poignant number was inspired by the Co Derry-born, Co Fermanagh-raised musician’s late father, Brian Hannon: specifically, the long-serving Church of Ireland Bishop of Clogher’s battle with Alzheimer’s prior to passing away in January 2022.
“I had to take a very deep breath before sort of going, ‘Okay, let’s just put it out there’,” admits Hannon (54) of honouring his late dad with a new Divine Comedy single.
“It’s funny, you know, the act of writing it was not as difficult as you’d imagine. I sort of came up with the basic line idea [Hannon croons] – ‘The last time I saw the old maaaan’ – while walking the dogs.
“As soon as you come up with that line, you realise what it’s about. You know what your subconscious is telling you. And you think, ‘Oh, s***: I have to write it now’, you know?”
In typically sophisticated Divine Comedy style, the song communicates an abundance of heartache and loss while skilfully avoiding lyrical and musical clichés.
“I really was so desperate to not make any kind of grand statements, to sort of not say how I felt at all,” explains Hannon, who recorded the song and the rest of his 13th studio album – his first new music since penning the songs for the chart-topping soundtrack of the 2023 movie Wonka – at Abbey Road Studios in London.
“There’s only really four chunks of lyrics, with like three lines each, and they just paint a little picture each time.
“I much prefer it when you just sort of leave it to the listener to work out the emotions.”
Here and elsewhere on Rainy Sunday Afternoon, Hannon manages to channel the existential angst of living through strange and unsettling times into songs that mine domestic, everyday concerns along with the grimly absurd state of the wider world – from poetic grappling with the futile horrors of war (previous single Achilles) and the perils of spouse-irritating sedentary sports spectatorship (The Man Who Turned Into a Chair) to the heart-bursting/breaking swell of post-empty nest paternal love (Invisible Thread), with a fever dreamy pit-stop at Donald Trump’s retirement pile (Mar-a-Lago By The Sea) along the way.
Clearly, then, it’s a totally different vibe from the sugary showtune confections of Wonka, and indeed the eclectic sounds of the last Divine Comedy LP, 2019’s sprawling, Top 5-troubling concept album Office Politics.
“Everything I do is a reaction to what I did before,” explains Hannon.
“Wonka was thoroughly satisfying to work on. It was almost a dream come true, and I’m not just saying that in the lamest sense.
“It’s like, when [director] Paul King came to me and said, ‘I’m doing a film version of Wonka. I think it’s a musical. I want it to sort of be much more in tune with Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory’, I immediately went ‘Right, I know exactly what to do – let me at it’.
“Because I loved Anthony Newley [songwriter for WW&TCF] and I loved those songs growing up before I knew who the f*** Anthony Newley was.
“So yeah, I enjoyed that until I’d stopped enjoying it, you know? It got really hard having to do about five versions of every song just to prove that the one you did first was the best one.
“But they do have quite a few quids riding on the success of these films, so they can’t afford to get it wrong.”
Both the Wonka soundtrack and Rainy Sunday Afternoon were recorded at the legendary Abbey Road Studios, a place which really does have musical magic in its bricks and mortar.
Indeed, for a while there its reputation was so lucrative that it was becoming quite hard for bands to actually book in for recording sessions, as Hannon explains.
“It had a period where it was just doing corporate stuff every day, where they’d have businesses coming in and going, ‘ooh, this is where they recorded such and such’.
“They were sort of pricing-out the bands. But I think Abbey Road have reconsidered a bit, and they’re trying to make room for bands again. And we were delighted to help them out.
“It’s a lovely place, it’s just so well run. And the gear is amazing – microphones from the 1940s, 50s and 60s kept in perfect working order. And the rooms are amazing.
“Even though we were sort of recording through the standard desk there, which is in itself quite old, they still had a really old 1960s desk on the other side of the room – so we put everything through that to sort of get some of its ‘valvishness’ going on. We made good use of everything.”
Once the album is released on September 19, Hannon will be taking Rainy Sunday Afternoon on the road in Britain and Europe through the autumn and winter before reaching Ireland next March.
“The best thing about you having to wait so long is that we’ll really know what we’re at by then,” says the Divine Comedy leader, addressing the patience of Irish fans.
“We haven’t started rehearsing for the tour yet, but I’ve been sort of thinking about modifying arrangements and things, because I might be well off but I can’t afford a f***ing orchestra.
“I do have an excellent band, though. We’ve been basically together for 20 years now, so we all know what we’re at – and we make a big, big noise.”
