THE DIVINE COMEDY Casanova (Sentana)

The Divine Comedy’s (a.k.a. Neil Hannon’s) third album, "inspired by the eighteenth century gambler, eroticist and spy", is a treat: if you’ve ever harboured the suspicion that Pulp were peddlers of a tatty edifice then "Casanova" is the real deal. Where Cocker’s crew dwell on the self-consciously superficial, full of rinky-dink tunes and shock-horror topical lyrics (a bit like Carter USM with marginally better dress sense), The Divine Comedy swap stylophones for string sections, pimply adolescent angst for genuine longing, an insidious sense of humour and an attitude that’s straight out of the dictionary definition of bittersweet. Besides being the closest we’re ever going to get to a dead ringer for Scott Walker, both in appearance and vocal talent (he even swipes one of Noel Engel’s song titles for "Through A Long & Sleepless Night"), Hannon fashions wickedly wonderful tracks such as "Something For The Weekend", "Becoming More Like Alfie" ("And everybody knows that no means yes/Just like glasses come free on the NHS/And the more I look through them the more I see/I’m becoming more like Alfie"), "The Frog Princess" and "A Woman Of The World", home to the best rock whistling since Teenage Fanclub’s "Mellow Doubt". "She’s a fake/Yeah, but she’s a real fake" runs the call and response in the latter, and even if Hannon doesn’t walk it like he talks it, "Casanova" still sounds like one of the most genuine releases of 1996.

THE DIVINE COMEDY A Short Album About Love (Sentana)

And indeed it is exactly what the title says - seven tracks extravagantly recorded live(ish) with the Brunel Ensemble at the Shepherds Bush Empire last October, "A Short Album About Love" has apparently been issued (four days before Valentine’s Day, coincidentally enough) to restore some sense of balance to Neil Hannon’s public persona following the brittle and bitter twistedness of his breakthrough masterwork "Casanova". On these terms its at least a partial success, witness the heartstrong headrush that constitutes the opener "In Pursuit Of Happiness" and the tinkly radiofriendliness of "Everybody Knows (Except You)". Elsewhere the fine line between being earnest and dreary gets thoroughly lambadad on ("Someone" and "Timewatching", which both tend to plod a bit) and the sense of wide-eyed wonder sometimes topples over into showbiz mawkishness ("If I Were You (I’d Be Through With Me)" and "I’m All You Need"). Maybe this much honesty isn’t good for the soul - there are too many occasions when "Casanova"’s crisp pop sensibilities curdle into rambling self-indulgence, but the mere fact that this album exists is wonder enough to allow the more sensitive to excuse its failings. As if we needed any more of a handle on where The Divine Comedy is coming from, Hannon’s choice of in-concert covers is reputed to consist of American Music Club’s "Johnny Mathis’ Feet", The Walker Brothers’ "Make It Easy On Yourself" and The Electric Light Orchestra’s "Mr. Blue Sky"! And if that isn’t enough to guarantee instant deification, what do we find scratched into the runout groove of the limited edition vinyl pressing but "Better to have loved & lost than never to have loved at all". Is this what you mean by ‘concept album’, Grandpa?

THE DIVINE COMEDY Fin De Siècle (Sentanta)

Being the first Divine Comedy album to be recorded in the shadow of significant success (following the radio friendly unit shiftiness of last year’s "Everybody Knows (Except You)" single), Neil Hannon’s tactic for dealing with some pretty monumental expectation appears to be to fight it with some pretty monumental orchestration. "Fin De Siècle" is, by anybody’s standards, a weighty, massive album, sadly not in the 180 gram audiophile pressing sense but in the massed ranks of orchestra and choir sense (The Brunel Ensemble and the Crouch End Festival Chorus respectively). It’s a little like "Be Here Now" might sound if rearranged as the soundtrack to a royal wedding.

But only a little, as the opening track’s references to speeding limousines in Parisian tunnels would readily acknowledge. "Fin De Siècle" seems like Neil Hannon’s attempted to craft a Divine Comedy album for everyman, one where his acutely incisive lyrical wit and canny ear for a bittersweet melancholy melody becomes subverted by broad strokes of nudge-wink observations and tunes you can hum almost before you’ve heard them. Which isn’t exactly a terrible thing, but...well, you may have read that one of the future singles contained herein is "National Express", a jolly ode to the coach company of the same name. Not exactly Scott Walker, is it? Other songs, such as "Commuter Love" and "Sweden", aren’t exactly shrouded in metaphor (although Hannon does shout stuff about Ingmar Bergman and Ibsen over the strangulating string and choral arrangements on the latter.)

"Fin De Siècle" is best when it isn’t being quite so blatant, nowhere more so than on side one’s hypnotic, lengthy closer "Eric The Gardener", which sounds like Michael Nyman playing chess with Kraftwerk, and the almost moving "The Certainty Of Chance" ("Tilt"-era Scott Walker giving a lecture on chaos theory, near enough). And you may have read about Hannon’s statement on the Northern Ireland situation, "Sunrise", which remains pretty stunning despite being almost submerged under the dread hand of overorchestration.

And that’s what’s not good about "Fin De Siècle": it seems to think that without a 52-piece orchestra and a 46 choristers scraping and hollering behind you nobody will pay any attention to what you’re saying, and that those once charmed by the fumbling emotional honesty of "Everybody Knows (Except You)" will be similarly delighted by thigh-slapping, bier-keller rumbustiousness about coach companies. It doesn’t make for a bad album, exactly, but more for the kind of over-egged listening experience that, superficially tasty as it may seem, you may not want to return to too often.

THE DIVINE COMEDY/MARK EITZEL Newport V3, 15 January 1999

The V3 Club is Newport's newest venue, apparently intended to straddle the vast gulf that separates the broom-cupboard ambience of The Legendary TJs and the Newport Centre's enormodome-for-visiting-megastars positioning. As such it's a tremendous success: future attractions include such popular recording artistes as The Bluetones, Terrorvision, Billy Bragg and - hopefully! - the mighty Mercury Rev, all of whom might otherwise be forced to avoid the principality. So little niggles like being kept waiting in the rain until 8pm whilst Mark Eitzel sounchecked (pity the poor damp masses who believed the line on the ticket about the doors opening at 6:30) seem irrelevant in context, especially when confronted by the club's centrepiece, a plastic model of a fire-breathing dragon - allegedly 55 feet high - that faces the stage. Another plus point for the discerning gig goer is that the stage itself is roughly at head height, so it's almost impossible to not see what's going on.

Anyhow, Mark Eitzel, former prophet of American Music Club, one of post-punk's greatest lost bands, slopes on wearing a black cap just like the one I'd been using to keep the rain off outside - respect! Accompanied by a keyboard player (who disappeared under his instrument during the last song in a doomed attempt to coax it back to life) and a drummer working with a ridiculously small kit, a la Stray Cats, he sings seven or eight new songs, a little like those featured on his last album, the snappily titled "Caught In A Trap And I Can't Back Out ‘Cause I Love You Too Much, Baby", except a tad livelier. Some of the more memorable lines are stuff like "America would be a great country if it wasn't for the people", a sentiment that would probably go down even less of a desert storm in his homeland than it does in front of a frankly unappreciative audience tonight. Between song pronouncements are limited to the likes of "That was, uh…" and "We're called…". He doesn't seem to be having a ball: in contrast to the troubled troubadour captured eight years almost to the day earlier at London's Borderline on the wonderful "Songs Of Love" album Eitzel tonight seemed to be wallowing in a hopeless bitterness, as if he's finally realised that the world really is too good for his elegant, fragile music and is at pains to return the compliment.

The Divine Comedy, then: Neil Hannon is clearly (another) star, if not of the same calibre as Cerys. He radiates charisma even in a small venue like this, a strange combination of Jarvis Cocker, Scott Walker and Michael Nyman. He is accompanied by two keyboard players, two percussionists, a guitarist and bassist – with a line-up like that you half expect them to burst into "The Myths And Legends Of King Arthur And The Knights Of The Round Table" at any given moment, but they make a decent fist of reduced (and, as with the Manics, therefore more aesthetically pleasing) versions of "Fin De Seicle"'s grandiose architecture. Best bits - well, everything sounds good, even the Queen-style audience singalongs of the usually contemptible "National Express". But he plays the slo-mo Nyman-meets-Chaos Theory lecture that is "The Certainty Of Chance", knocks out a frenzied, whirling "In Pursuit Of Happiness" and delivers rollocking versions of the classic singles "Becoming More Like Alfie" and "Something For The Weekend", although the rest of "Casanova" (his bestest album, in my opinion) remains sadly untouched. (Also no "Tonight We Fly" (sob) or "Everybody Knows (Except You)", probably his most famous single). Unexpected bit: a high-octane punk rock thrash through The Magnetic Fields' "Famous". Best bit: Mark Eitzel appearing mid-set for a majestic, luxuriant reading of the old American Music Club wonder "Johnny Mathis' Feet" - stunning, The Divine Comedy upholstering the same kind of lush sound that AMC spread over their last Virgin albums – an amazing moment for the handful of American Music Club fans in the audience. One reclusive and reluctant legend, one good band and one fine venue, an enjoyable evening.

THE DIVINE COMEDY A Secret History…The Best Of The Divine Comedy (Setanta)

"A Secret History" collate the decade-long career of Neil Hannon a.ka. The Divine Comedy, a prospect that initially sounds extremely appealing when you consider the continuous stream of finely-polished toff-Pulp pop nuggets he's released since the fabulous 1996 breakthrough album "Casanova". Such hopes are immediately dashed when you discover that the first of the 17 tracks on this compilation is the punchably smug oompah no-brow sarcasm of "National Express". Things can only get better, as they must when the album also quite rightly revisits vintage "Casanova"-era gems such as "Something For The Weekend", "Becoming More Like Alfie", "The Frog Princess" and "Songs Of Love", all perfect examples of Hannon's James Bond sophistication laced with Scott Walker's voice and tunes and lanced with Morrissey wit. But nevertheless there's something about hearing all these great songs one after another that somehow diminishes their effect: on "Casanova" they worked perfectly within the elaborate conceit of the album's guiding concept; heard here out of context they seem unusually weak and vulnerable.

The inclusion of vast tracts of the earlier "Promenade" and "Liberation" albums might tempt the casual browser, but even those tracks seem annoyingly mannered and stilted here, childhood and teenage tales such as "The Summerhouse" and "Your Daddy's Car" sounding almost creepy with hindsight and Hannon's rakish later persona. For the completist the incentive to purchase is centred around a re-recorded version of the hayfever hymn "The Pop Singer's Fear Of The Pollen Count", the risible Noel Coward cover "I've Been To A Marvellous Party", originally to be found on the "20^th Century Blues - The Songs Of Noel Coward" charity/tribute album, and a pair of interesting newies, "Gin Soaked Boy" and "Too Young To Die".

Nevertheless, after you're thinking disdainful thoughts after an hour or so of The Divine Comedy's jaunty fop pop you arrive at the final track, the frankly staggering "Tonight We Fly". Originally to be found on the "Promenade" album, this is Neil Hannon's finest three minutes, blessed with one of his best Michael Nyman imitation orchestrations and quite literally soaring lyrics, it's almost good enough to eradicate the memory of the album's worst sickening excesses. If you buy the album for this track alone, you won’t be disappointed.

THE DIVINE COMEDY Absent Friends (Parlophone)

The absent friends of the title might well refer to Neil Hannon's former bandmates as, following the unevenly received back to basics trainers and jeans approach of 2001's "Regeneration", The Divine Comedy is now essentially a solo concern. Given that Hannon never sounded particularly comfortable trying to front a conventional rock group and nobody else makes lavish Scott Walkeresque fop pop quite like he does (although if rumours that Walker has recently signed to 4AD bear fruit the competition could become rather more intense) "Absent Friends" offers some scope for reinvigoration and reinvention.

And, partially at least, it lives up to that potential. The title track gallops through a thousand Western film themes (and, rather more prosaically, that of "Black Beauty" as well) and breathlessly namechecks Jean Seberg, Steve McQueen and Oscar Wilde. The single "Come Home Billy Bird" is the kind of pearlescent gem that can have listeners singing along before the first play ends, jauntily charting the titular Mr Bird's attempts to return home in time for his son's football game (although if he's really the kind of experienced international business traveller the song suggests surely he would pack his luggage more appropriately, erasing a verse in the process). "Our Mutual Friend" is a flamenco-flecked dissection of the betrayal of a fast-burning near-miss relationship - "We sang a song that I can't sing anymore/And then we kissed" - a more socially responsible version of the exploits of the old "Casanova". "The Happy Goth" - "That music you play/I'm not saying it's bad/It just seems terribly sad" tickles the ribs, although it might have been even funnier 15 years ago.