Casanova

Product Information

Talbot was beginning to play an increasingly important role in the band; he arranged and orchestrated "The Dogs and the Horses," and he co-arranged "Theme from Casanova" with Hannon. When Scott Walker died in 2019, I honestly felt despair over losing an artist like I had felt for no other before. The Divine Comedy's Casanova - a collection of songs for bass baritone and ensemble, inspired by the writings of the eighteenth century Venetian gambler, eroticist and spy; and performed for us there by the composer, Neil Hannon.

The CD comes with a booklet of photos, credits and extensive liner notes written by Neil covering the context and inspiration behind the album and its songs.I may be ready to leave Father Ted behind in the vault of nostalgia in my mind, but Casanova I will keep coming back to – and not just for “Songs of Love”. Thanks to orchestral arranger Joby Talbot, Hannon sounds truly like a timeless icon here, and that that icon is Scott Walker makes the album all the more enjoyable.

Casanova featured more musicians than on the band's previous two albums, Liberation and Promenade, but like those two albums, Neil Hannon performed the majority of the instrumental parts himself, with co-producer/drummer Darren Allison directing proceedings.The remastering work, on my copy, really does make such a huge difference in the definition of the sound, when compared to the OG pressing. But hearing it also reminds me to be thankful that the show put me onto one of Northern Ireland’s best musical exports: The Divine Comedy.

The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Also a scratch right at the beginning of the side to dead wax that creates a nasty pop for the first five or six seconds. To mark the release, The Divine Comedy play five nights at the Barbican in London in early September and then later the same month, five nights at the Cite de la Musique in Paris. The LP is heavyweight black vinyl in a gatefold sleeve accompanied with photos, credits and Neil's liner notes. Take the aforementioned “Songs of Love” for example; Hannon pokes fun at young couples prancing about in front of him with absolutely no regard for how miserable he is.The rubber brass, marimba, and wide-spanning orchestration on “Middle-Class Heroes” makes it feel like it could fit onto Scott 2 all too perfectly. The LP release consists of the original remastered album, cut at Abbey Road, packaged with a download code for the album and bonus tracks. First released in 1996 it explored and dissected a world of casual affairs, loose morals and a thousand anxieties in between.

We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. No doubt the fame from Father Ted helped make the album a commercial success (making it a gold record as well as boasting two Top 20 singles in the UK charts), but the strength of Casanova is earned in its own right – something all the more obvious in hindsight. For some, the lyrics might not make for easy listening (even though a lot is left to innuendo and imagination), but it also speaks to Hannon’s skill at painting characters with depth and arcs over the course of just a song.Charge” is full of vaudeville piano breaks over a marching stomp of drums, all before the air raid sirens start bellowing and orchestra starts spiralling over the sound of gunfire; the imperialist/colonial air is there, but Hannon has his tongue wedged firmly in his cheek. The Northern Irish band ushered in a new set of fans and a wash of fame by penning the show’s theme tune, as well as providing other incidental music throughout the show’s three series run ( including probably the loveliest song about a horse you’ll ever hear). When the bass gets slinky and busy during passages on “Charge” and “A Woman of the World” there are echoes of Climate of Hunter to be heard. After spending quality time with the album, all 11 tracks here become songs of love to love, even if they are all actually about sex (or maybe especially because of that fact).