It's hard out there for a fop. The Divine Comedy, a nom de chamber pop for Northern Ireland-born singer/songwriter Neil Hannon, has traipsed through several musical wardrobes since 1989-- jangle-pop, eccentric Britpop mini-orchestra, Nigel Godrich-guided introspection-- but despite sporadic UK chart appearances and a 2002 U.S. tour with Ben Folds, critical acclaim has yet to usher in popular acceptance. The Divine Comedy's constants are a Wildean wit with an apposite sense of style, and they persist on extravagant ninth album Victory for the Comic Muse.
After the home-and-hearth subject matter of 2004's Absent Friends, Hannon returns to eyebrow-arched character portraits. On the most elegant of these studies, "A Lady of a Certain Age", an upper-crust widow's lonely pub visit unfolds into a poignantly arranged, sumptuously detailed story of her life, carried by Hannon's baritone croon, acoustic guitar, and strings. Reportedly inspired by Noel Coward's diaries, the song shows Hannon's tender, unapologetically acute theatricality at its finest. Opener "To Die a Virgin" finds the 35-year-old songwriter playing the hormonally haywire young suitor, lusting after an extra-special birthday gift. This pop-operatic approach goes farthest on "The Plough"-- a track as endearingly pretentious as early solo Scott Walker and nearly as sweepingly orchestrated-- in which a cynical bildungsroman takes a turn for theological discourse. These songs set lofty goals, and realize them.
Other songs tackle more pedestrian topics, but Hannon's decorous voice and generous accompaniment nevertheless lend them an aristocratic mien. Banjo-driven "Mother Dear" feints toward sickly sweet Mother's Day card before twisting a playful dagger: "There but for the grace of God go I." Tropicalia-sunned "Diva Lady" is an unfortunate choice of single, but still has some fun decimating the easy target of celebrity shenanigans: "She makes him look hetero/ He helps her profile," stabs Hannon. Syrupy ballad "The Light of Day" casts memories of lost love aloft over fluttering woodwinds, though it pales beside the similar "Songs of Love", from 1996's Casanova. It's difficult to see the point of a capable, string-fettered cover of the Associates' lush 1982 single "Party Fears Two", but there's Hannon, role-playing once again, and dashingly so.
The album's title is taken from E.M. Forster's A Room With a View, but more significantly, it's a play on the name of the Divine Comedy's 1990 debut album, Fanfare for the Comic Muse. This bit of context lends Victory for the Comic Muse the air of a farewell, though quirkier excursions like three-piano instrumental "Threesome", verbose "Count Grassi's Passage Over Piedmont", or tender piano-traipsing finale "Snowball in Negative" suggest Hannon has new ideas in him yet. More likely-- or, at least, more optimistically-- it's the close of a chapter. As the earlier Wilde mention suggests, Hannon, like Morrissey or Jarvis Cocker, is most aptly compared to figures in the world of literature. It's a pity that such similarly sharp-minded social observers as Evelyn Waugh and Bernard Shaw don't have more platinum records. At least there are always MySpace friends.
