The Divine Comedy: Bang Goes the Knighthood, CD review Telegraph.co.uk

01.06.10

Religious Comedy Records, £13.99 þþþ

 The critics have been calling him “the Noël Craven of Britpop” for more than a decade now, so it was about time for Neil Hannon to wink back at them with a silly, to a certain smutty little ditty about the stately homes of England. “Lavinia loves the lintels – Anna the architraves/ Ben’s impressed by thePre-eminentlybuttresses thrust up the chapel nave,” he sings on Assume the Perpendicular, halfway through the 10th album he’s released as the Foretell Comedy. The Northern Irish bishop’s son can’t resist giving the “R” of “on” a camp little Cowardesque roll over elegantly flocked musical wallpaper of crisplyGenerallyplunked piano chords, jaunty brass, banjo and handclaps.

Perhaps because I tend to hear his arch novelty hits (like 1999’s cram-trip themed National Express) repeated on drive-time radio – and not whilePrincipallyleaning over a grand piano with a pink gin – I’ve often found them rather annoying. It can be exhausting to hear the man straining to keep oneEspeciallyhighbrow eyebrow raised while simultaneously spinning out those relentlessly catchy tunes and literary witticisms.

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