The Divine Comedy: On new music, love, loss and Timotheé Chalamet

As Neil Hannon prepares to release his 13th record as The Divine Comedy, he talks to Lauren Murphy about loss, writing music for Hollywood and the state of his ambition

Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy. Pic: Kevin Westenberg

Neil Hannon has a simple ambition. His new album, Rainy Sunday Afternoon, is his 13th release under the banner of The Divine Comedy — but fans needn’t worry about the now 54-year-old taking early retirement.

“If this is 13, I kind of want to get to 20, because I like neatness,” he says, a silk scarf slung rakishly around his neck when we meet for coffee in Dublin.

“So I’ve worked out that I’d have to make an album every 2.3 years.”

He baulks at the idea, noting how he once churned out albums with aplomb as a younger man.

“Now, I feel like I need a four-year rest in between [each one]. But also, I feel like people need a rest from me. It’s like, ‘Oh my god, another Divine Comedy album? Jesus’. So I don’t know how we’re gonna get to 20 at this rate.”

He looks momentarily perplexed.

“I might just splurge at some point and do about five in two years.”

There is little chance that listeners will feel jaded by Rainy Sunday Afternoon, which is one of the most sumptuous-sounding Divine Comedy albums to date.

Recorded at Abbey Rd’s iconic Studio 3, these are beautifully arranged orchestral pop songs with an opaque underbelly, taking their cue from greats such as Burt Bacharach and Scott Walker.

After 2019’s synthpop-addled Office Politics, he notes how “you always return to your happy place in the end”

For Hannon, that place is melancholic orchestral pop music — although he recently had the chance to indulge his more whimsical side by writing the original songs for the soundtrack of 2023’s Wonka.

“I kept imagining for years that I was going to get sacked at any moment when they realised ‘Why have we got this little indie fellow doing the songs for this massive Hollywood film?’” he jokes.

“I was really just channeling a different part of myself, because I love proper family musicals in the old style. So when you get a job like that, you just go, ‘Oh, yeah! I don’t have to be remotely cynical or ironic.’”

He met the man who sang his songs, Timotheé Chalamet, on a handful of occasions — a “lovely lad”, by his reckoning.

“And I think I was very lucky to have him in that role, because he actually had a really nice voice and he brought them to life really successfully.”

Recording the Wonka soundtrack at Abbey Rd also inadvertently inspired the new Divine Comedy album.

“I vividly remember sitting at the back of the room going: ‘This sounds so good. I’ve got to make a record just like this before I cop it’.

“But it had to be a certain kind of record. And then songs like I Want You and The Heart is a Lonely Hunter came along, and I thought: ‘Yeah, that’s a vibe that will work.’”

He pauses for a moment.

“Or maybe that was just hiding the fact that these songs were helping me. That it was kind of soothing my soul.”

Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy: “But how am I going to get to 20 albums if I write a bloody book?”. Pic: Kevin Westenberg

DEPARTURES

There were other reasons for the album’s somewhat lugubrious tone.

His favourite dog died. Then he and his wife, musician and animal rights campaigner Cathy Davey, were temporarily “exiled” from their Kildare home during building work, making for an uneasy year-long displacement.

In 2022, Hannon also lost his father Brian after a long decline due to Alzheimer’s.

The song The Last Time I Saw the Old Man is a moving account of his last visit home, with lyrics like: “The last time I saw the old man / He was moving very slowly, and he didn’t seem to know me.”

“It was almost a relief when he died, because he’d been living with Alzheimer’s for a long time and it was kind of cruel to keep going.”

He sighs.

“I don’t look upon the song as being written for him, or as a dedication, it’s kind of an on-the-nose observational portrait of the unfairness of it all.

“And I know that far too many people are in the same position.

“I don’t know why I wrote it. I just had to write it.”

It’s not all doom and gloom.

There is space for some lightheartedness in the shape of The Man Who Turned Into a Chair, while All the Pretty Lights is a gorgeous blast of nostalgia in the form of a childhood Christmas. 

The “gallows humour” of Mar-a-Lago by the Sea — a song written pre-election that imagined Trump in a prison cell, nostalgic for his “horrible home”, is the closest Hannon may come to writing a political song.

There have been ups and downs in recent years, but one highlight was finally tying the knot with the aforementioned Davey.

While she has sung on previous Divine Comedy albums, she could not be coaxed out of semi-retirement this time.

Another woman in his life who does feature on Rainy Sunday Afternoon, however, is his 23–year-old daughter Willow, who sings on the album Invisible Thread. 

With lyrics like “I used to think that nobody could keep you safe but me / That only I could guide you through life’s crazy tapestry / But now you’re guiding me”, it’s a beautiful paean to the bittersweetness of watching your children spread their wings.

“I didn’t really give her an option. I said: ‘Come and sing on my record’,” he says of her enlistment.

“How did she react [to the song]? She’s so like me, to the extent that we don’t really talk about that stuff. We just know each other’s feelings, and then talk about Pixies records or history.”

Willow is now in her own band, Burglar.

Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy. Pic: Kevin Westenberg

MORE TO DO

Earlier this year, Hannon presented the Choice Music Prize for Irish Album of the Year to (a representative) of Fontaines DC — a prize that he himself won for his 2006 album Victory for the Comic Muse. 

If he hadn’t already stated his ambition to make at least seven more albums you might assume that he is ready to pass on the baton, but there is plenty more work to do.

Wonka was not his only recent incursion into the film world; he also provided the soundtrack to sci-fi film LOLA in 2022, and there are songs on Rainy Sunday Afternoon that you could easily imagine on a Bond soundtrack. 

He rebuffs the possibility, noting how you “have to be the most famous person in the world” to be considered.

“Are they going to get Taylor Swift to do the next one?” He frowns. “I don’t think she’s quite right.”

The much-touted Father Ted musical, which he was also writing the songs for, was very much on track the last time The Divine Comedy released an album in 2019. 

That project has now been shelved. 

Is there anything he wants to say about that? Hannon thinks for the briefest of moments. “No,” he says, before bursting into peals of laughter.

It has been 35 years since The Divine Comedy’s debut album Fanfare for the Comic Muse was released, and he guffaws at the idea of reconciling the driven young musician he was back then with who he is now. 

“I have about 1% of the ambition that I had when I was 20,” he admits, laughing.

“Honestly, I was just made of ambition as a 20-year-old. Now it’s like, ‘Whatever….’”

Still, there may still be one item to be ticked off the bucket list. 

Years ago, Hannon dismissed the notion of penning his memoir, protesting that he has “not led a particularly fascinating life.” 

Now, however, he is warming to the idea. “Well, my life has gotten more interesting… ,” he says after a lengthy pause. “So… maybe.” 

He suddenly jolts back to reality. “But how am I going to get to 20 albums if I write a bloody book?”

• Rainy Sunday Afternoon is released on September 19. 
• The Divine Comedy play the National Concert Hall on March 28 and 29 (both sold out) and are special guests to David Gray at Live at the Marquee, Cork, on June 13 and 14, 2026.