In 2009, Neil Hannon took a break from being the Divine Comedy, got together with Thomas Walsh of Pugwash and started an intentionally short-lived new band called the Duckworth Lewis Method. The band named itself for a complicated manual for scoring games of cricket, and all of its songs were about the sport. It's a goofy concept, but their album was charming and fun, even if (like me) you rarely had a clue what they were singing about. That side project was basically a lark, but it exemplified the key to Hannon's long-term success as the Divine Comedy: He's dead serious about having a good time. His ability to pivot quickly from singing jokes with an arched eyebrow to an unironic meditation on death or a favorite cultural icon is unparalleled. And he approaches it all with a sense of unbridled melodrama that sometimes makes the humor hard to separate from the serious musing.
It works for a few reasons. The most basic is that he has a great voice, and he backs it up with uncanny musical smarts-- the man knows how to arrange a song. But beyond that, he makes good records because he's not afraid to look silly, and therefore he doesn't pull any punches in his songwriting. If he's got a stupid pun in mind, he goes with it and doesn't apologize. He combines that with a foppish image that makes him out to be the hippest square in the room, and it all comes together to put Hannon in his own little pop music niche. Bang Goes the Knighthood is his ninth album as the Divine Comedy, and it gives listeners the kind of trip they can get only from him.
For instance, even as a long-time fan, I approached "At the Indie Disco" with caution-- the title looks like a recipe for stained social commentary-- but the song turns out to be the kind of tribute to a subculture that makes you feel like Hannon is actually part of it. He references 10 bands (some directly and others more coyly), and wraps the scene portrait around a real story about two friends who've entered that ambiguous "are we going out?" phase in their relationship. Here's him thinking about her on the bus ride home: "I think of her and I sing the words to my favorite song/ She makes my heart beat the same way/ As at the start of 'Blue Monday'/ Always the last song that they play." The music even has echoes of 90s indie dance music.
On the jokier end of things, "The Complete Banker" is a pretty unvarnished, sarcastic takedown of a straw banker, who is unabashedly greedy, and shruggingly asks, "If I say I'm sorry, will you give me the money?" It could be didactic if it didn't marry so well to the barrelhouse bounce of the music-- the easy way the verse melts into the chorus could be used as an example in a songwriting master class. It doesn't all work so well. "Can You Stand Upon One Leg" takes a stab at inspirational songwriting, trying to equate the ability to stand on one leg to the ability to do anything else, and it all steers toward a bit of singing slapstick wherein Hannon holds a high note for a ridiculously long time. It's funny once.
As with the last Divine Comedy album, Victory for the Comic Muse, the orchestration on Bang Goes the Knighthood is modest, with strings used sparingly in favor of small-band arrangements and a lot of organ. It's hard to imagine this album converting anyone who's never liked Hannon's work before, but it's built to please anyone who's ever enjoyed a note he's played. His days of creating spectacular extravaganzas may be well behind him, but the more modest ambitions on display here are nearly as enjoyable to hear.
