Tom Dunne: A tribute to Neil Hannon, the Divine Comedy, and a moving song about parenting
Neil Hannon of the Divine Comedy. (Photo by Kate Green/Getty Images)
Neil Hannon’s Divine Comedy has been sound tracking my life since the Britpop days. was the going out anthem of that era.
To this day, Hannon paints pictures with music and captures subtle shades of emotion like few others. Their 13th album, is another addition to a wonderful canon of work.
A lot has happened in his life since 2019’s He has written all the original songs for a major career achievement by any measure, and has released a career spanning Best Of which, in tandem with stunning live shows, has seen his status a “national treasure” truly enshrined.
You could argue that that status was enshrined the moment he composed It is impossible to imagine that magic show, that magic cast and that magic time without the opening bars of his music. It still evokes a moment of simple innocence, great pride and killer laughs.
But it is events in his personal life that mostly inform the rich corridors of his latest work. His dad, Brian, the Bishop of Clogher, sadly passed away in 2022 at the age of 85 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s. His passing, and mortality in general, cast a long shadow here.
The particular song about his dad, cannot have been an easy song to write. Hannon resolved to face into it and just write what he saw. There are no punches pulled. It is poignant, honest, and beautiful.
Elsewhere, Trump is skewered with more grace and melodic style than he deserves on Mar-a-Lago by the Sea. And the general state of the world – spoiler alert: it’s bad – is treated with wit, insight, and customary gently-stringed splendour. The album is, as we now expect, another Hannon tour de force.
But there is always one track on a Divine Comedy album that brings me back time and time again. On (2006) it was the stunning On (2016) it was a song with one of the most beautiful, haunting, trumpet solos of the age.
On the latest record, it is It had me from the opening bars. Even without its subject matter it would have stood out but as I listened and grappled, grappled and listened and realised slowly that it was about his daughter, it essentially overwhelmed me. I’m still not the better for it.
deals with that moment in a parent’s life when they realise that their child is an adult and is leaving them to make their way in the outside world. It is theoretically the moment it has all been leading towards: a joyous culmination of your parenting skills. And yet.
“I used to think that no one could keep you safe but me, that only I could guide you through’s life’s crazy tapestry, but now you’re guiding me” sings Hannon, to devastating effect. He then adds “leave if you’ve got to leave, just know, there will always be an invisible thread between you and me.”
I’d elaborate more on that but it’s hard to see the keyboard through the tears. Ah Neil, could you not just stick to writing songs about and leave us poor dads alone?
Hannon is not of course the first to write a father/ daughter song. I am discounting all songs about newborn babies – – because all due respect Stevie, any fool can write about them when they are that age. When they can’t talk back and you dress and feed them, that’s easy.
It’s the later years – when they become free thinking - that the songwriting gets challenging. by Paul Simon is a good reference although I suspect Warren Zevon’s will take some beating. “She has a young man waiting” is all the reality any dad needs.
Hannon is on thin ice here. Willow, his daughter is a song-writer herself. The last time one song writer (Loudon Wainwright III) wrote a song to his own song-writer daughter (Martha Wainwright), it ended badly.
His song, on his 1973 album was a tender affair. Her 2005 response, not so much. And still her most popular song too! The ball’s in your court, Willow. Be gentle.
