Timewatching: The Divine Comedy Album-by-album thread

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by LivingForever, Nov 5, 2020.

  1. The Turning Year

    The Turning Year Lowering average scores since 2021

    Location:
    London, UK
    Haven't we heard that line from Neil somewhere before...? ;)

    Philip and Steve's Furniture Removal Company
    The is the track that makes me rate this album so highly overall. It is the kind of very intricate and detailed sort of experiment that I like to hear from Neil, and it absolutely works for me, especially amid such a varied album.

    I don't think Neil's made a secret of his liking for American minimalism (or maybe I just picked up on him mentioning it once because I also like it?!). It was Michael Nyman who coined the term 'minimalism' when writing for The Spectator in the 1960s, and his work has been compared to Reich and Glasss because of the musical 'units' of composition they all sometimes use, sp maybe Neil came to it through Nyman.
    Neil has used elements of minimalism before in his work - Promenade of course (but guess he was mainly copying Nyman!), possibly Eric the Gardener, and more recently and successfully, I think, with In May - but he has used them as tools amongst other things to create a style of his own.

    As to the 'song' itself, I love the very discrete different sections that it has. The phased vocal phrase, the vibraphone section which feels so refreshing after the rather earbending phasing, the progression to the spoken bit and then the glorious choral ending; it is a little marvel.

    The vibraphone part reminds me, perhaps not so surprisingly, of parts of Joby Talbot's Once Around the Sun album, but presumably the source idea might have come from something like Music For 18 Musicians by Steve Reich?

    The spoken 'if you live in New York City' section that references Boulez is vaguely amusing because Boulez called minimalists like Philip Glass and Steve Reich “too simple to be interesting"!. Is this their comeback?! (But it's the kind of joke that a lot of people probably won't get or pick up on, and is a bit of a cringey music teacher joke at that...).

    I like the idea that the 'stuff' referred to might be traditional systems of music, and that the 'Boulez-loving lout' (great phrase!) is tossing them around, while Phillip and Steve will take them apart and put them back together again with 'minimal' disruption (haha).

    I'm giving this top marks for the sheer ambition and unexpectedness of it, and having explored a little of the music it references I can see some of the 'jokes' in it, both musical and verbal, which I think work quite well (OK so they do annoy me a bit, and I'm not sure why I find a somg that cracks a joke about minimalist composers to be better than one about Morrisey with a bunch of flowers - I think it's my snobbery again :sigh:).
    This feels to me like a genuine homage made with great care and love for his type of music. It is shorter and much easier on the ear than what I know of Reich and Glass' work, but it seems to encapsulate a lot of what I've heard of Reich's music in particular, while remaining something that is uniquely Neil's own and being good fun.

    I really don't think the early version works, as the weakest part of the whole thing for me is the 'sitcom' idea. I'm really glad he thought of making the music an homage to Glass and Reich instead of whatever this is.
    5/5

    Edit: because I love this so much, I'm sort of surprised to see two lukewarm reactions so far. Interested to see what others think! Will this be the real travesty of the thread? ;)
     
  2. TheLemmingFace

    TheLemmingFace Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    Philip and Steve’s Furniture Removal Company
    This is brilliant!

    I heard it before the album came out, when it was played on Radio 3 (my first thought was ‘why is a Divine Comedy track getting pre-released on Radio 3?? What’s going on?’). I had no idea what to make of it. It sent me into a big deep dive into Steve Reich’s work, which was enlightening and wondrous. I'm inclined to like that kind of weirdness, and here Neil combines it with a nice witty twist, framing it as a sitcom theme (ha!). It’s obviously not a five star pop song, but that’s only because it’s not a pop song. It is, however, a 5/5.
     
  3. The Turning Year

    The Turning Year Lowering average scores since 2021

    Location:
    London, UK
    Hooray!! :cheers:
    I also came to Reich and Glass' work indirectly through TDC from the early Nyman connection, although I have to admit I had a Philip Glass CD on my shelf which I played once about 10 years ago, and this song prompted me to finally play it again!

    What's the betting Neil got the idea from this radio 4 programme?
    Moving Music
    Philip Glass and Steve Reich are best known as pioneers of minimalist music. What is less well known is that they ran a removal firm together to make ends meet while they were making their way as young composers in the 1960s.
     
  4. LivingForever

    LivingForever Forum Arachibutyrophobic Thread Starter

    Philip and Steve

    Well, @The Turning Year has already written far more eloquently on this than I was going to, but this to me is a minor masterpiece.

    I think Neil is at his best when he’s creating things that don’t sound like anything else - and in that I include especially things that don’t sound like Neil - and this is a prime example of that.

    That, plus as I’ve said before, I enjoy musical jokes much better than lyrical ones, and so creating a piece in this really intricate and exquisitely-done style just to back up the repeated singing of a daft name for a joke sitcom is right in my wheelhouse. AND- most importantly; the music is triumphant and joyful and actually a pleasure to listen to (which is why in many ways this is the anti-SSCSSS!)

    I said I had a 5 to dole out, and here it is.
     
  5. DaniMoonstar

    DaniMoonstar Forum Resident

    Location:
    Staffordshire
    Philip and Steve’s furniture removal company
    When I first heard this, I was, “What the hell is this?” A bit of filler nonsense to pad out the album? If Neil is riffing on 80s synth-pop, is the repetition attempting to emulate the trippiness of late 80s house music (without the house music)?

    But despite myself, I was intrigued. I’m not sure that Neil’s explanation doesn’t remove a little of the fun but it helps highlight how Neil really is trying to do something not only playful but in homage to the avant-grade. (Though that probably doesn’t apply to the Partridge-esque TV pitch up front.)

    A few listens in and I now feel that this is much more than a throwaway track but quite complex and compelling. I must confess I haven’t often listened to the live versions of other songs posted but I absolutely had to in this case. And, boy, that didn’t disappoint. You could see the real effort Neil was putting in to do the track justice.

    So in all something silly, engaging, thoughtful, intellectual, preposterous and utterly beguiling. I’m starting to really like it.

    4/5
     
  6. The Turning Year

    The Turning Year Lowering average scores since 2021

    Location:
    London, UK
    Love this! I think they did pretty well, especially Neil in the first part. Mindbending stuff to do live! o_O
     
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  7. a paul

    a paul Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    Philip and Steve

    When you mentioned you had a 5 coming up, and were wondering if others would have the same, I thought it might be this song. Maybe because of me also really quite liking it, and thinking it might be a secret sleeper hit for people.

    It's maybe not a 5, but I love the ambition and imagination for it. And then the music and ending is great. It's definitely a song I will remember from the name alone (for some strange reason! :D)

    Anyway, a 5 from me too.
     
  8. Linky53

    Linky53 Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Yorkshire UK
    Philip and Steve

    When I first heard this I was struggling to get it. At the back end of an album I was finding it hard to like. Clever but didn’t stand repeated listens. Now I have lived with it......I still feel the same.

    2.5/5
     
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  9. ericthegardener

    ericthegardener Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dallas, TX
    Philip and Steve

    3.5/5
     
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  10. Hazey John II

    Hazey John II The lyrics are fine, there's no problem there

    More times than I can count over the last year, when I've finished writing about the day's song, and it's really time for bed, a thought has occurred: "Let's listen to Philip and Steve again".

    I just love it. It still cracks me up after many, many listens. "To make your home all a-tone-all". I won't bang on too much as @The Turning Year and everyone else have already covered it very well. But yes, it's the immense effort put into such a silly idea - I like the demo version, but the final version is something else. But also, the warmth and love in it - it lightens my heart every time I hear it, though as usual with these things, it's hard to say why. Maybe - the joke works backwards: heh, these arty pretentious composers had to work for a living once. But it echos forwards: look what they had to do, to get to where they saw they could go. It's a sincere tribute to their achievement and a demonstration of what it means to Neil - while also being really funny.

    Something else about Neil too. Probably at some level he still regrets not becoming U2. But U2 could not do this. That live version is fantastic - reminds me of the madness of that falsetto Wuthering Heights cover from his first big tour. You can't do this live! But there it is. It's just great that he's still doing stuff as strange and wonderful as this after 30 years.

    5/5
     
  11. Vagabone

    Vagabone Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    Philip and Steve's...

    Interesting track. Glad to see it's getting some love. It's not my favourite style of music though, I can only go as high as 3/5. Possibly parts of it are over my head.

    The fact that it starts with a voice-memo on a phone makes it feel like it's continuing a series begun with "Other People" though in this case the voice recording does not persist throughout the track.

    Here's that possibly already familiar Philip Glass quote one more time:

    "ROBERT Hughes, the Australian art critic, filmmaker and writer, wandered into the kitchen of his fashionable loft home in New York’s SoHo to see how the plumber was going, setting up his new dishwasher.
    On his knees grappling with the machine, the plumber heard a noise and looked up.
    Hughes gasped: “My god, you’re Philip Glass. I can’t believe it. What are you doing here?”
    Glass, one of the world’s most famous composers, said afterwards: “It was obvious that I was installing his new dishwasher, and I told him I would soon be finished.”
    “But you are an artist,” Hughes protested.
    Glass said: “I explained that I was an artist but that I was sometimes a plumber as well, and that he should go away and let me finish.”

     
  12. Dalav

    Dalav Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Jersey
    Philip and Steve’s Furniture Removal Company

    The somewhat unexpected high marks and well-reasoned posts persuaded me to have another go at this track today with open ears. And it helped; with better insight into the style and origins I appreciate it more.

    I admire Neil for pushing the idea as far as he does, and placing such an experimental track on the album. It deserves its place.

    The clearly defined sections are a plus in breaking it down and making some sense of it. The latter two sections are an improvement over the first, with the third generating a nice uplifting mood via the chorus and the synth underneath.

    However, it maxes out at a certain level. I can’t pretend I get the same enjoyment from it as my other TDC favorites. My appreciation for music is more often derived from its emotional impact but this one is more of an intellectual exercise to my ear. Both admirable and interesting, for sure, but not a clear standout.

    3.4/5
     
    Last edited: Nov 19, 2021
  13. LivingForever

    LivingForever Forum Arachibutyrophobic Thread Starter

    I think that’s a fair comment. It’s true that this doesn’t move me quite like a “Tonight we Fly” or a “Don’t Look Down”. Although the sheer joy of those massed vocals by the end provokes something approaching elation!
     
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  14. LivingForever

    LivingForever Forum Arachibutyrophobic Thread Starter

    Ha! Yes, and whilst “Other People” seemed like an Accidental Partridge, you could almost believe this one’s a deliberate reference…

    Amen to that. I wonder what he’ll do next - I really hope we won’t see another “ok, sorry I did that weird stuff that some people didn’t like, here’s some songs that sound more like The Divine Comedy” album.
     
  15. christian42

    christian42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Lund, Sweden
    Isn't that just another way of describing a Greatest Hits album? :)
     
  16. jon-senior

    jon-senior Forum Resident

    Location:
    Eastleigh
    That's really nicely put, and kind of what I was trying to get at yesterday. It's a really good track, but I still can't like it enough to go above my score, and for the same reason you've given.
     
  17. jon-senior

    jon-senior Forum Resident

    Location:
    Eastleigh
    Hopefully, once the greatest hits collection is out of the way, not. And, to be fair, if he goes by chart positions alone, Office Politics is the most successful album non-greatest-hits album he's released, well, ever - so he shouldn't feel the need to revert to type. (It'd be interesting to know the actual figures behind those chart placements, of course, but that's a whole other discussion...)
     
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  18. drykid

    drykid Forum Resident

    Location:
    Hereford, UK
    BBC Four had a series called "Tones, Drones and Arpeggios - The Magic of Minimalism" which covered Reich, Glass and various others. Here's the specific bit where they talk about the history of the phasing method and then repeat the experiment themselves:

    Tones Drones And Arpeggios The Magic Of Minimalism S01e01 - video Dailymotion

    Though the whole thing is worth watching.

    I don't have two reel-to-reels to do what they're doing (well, actually that's a lie, I do have two reel-to-reels but not the patience to set this kind of thing up) but there is a mode on my Prophet VS synth where you can set up two arpeggiated patterns to play over top of each other. But the clever bit is that they don't have to be the same length, so you could say have a twenty-note pattern playing over top of a twenty-one note pattern and if you leave them going then they'll gradually move apart and back together again. As the phase difference between the two is measured in whole notes (and nothing smaller) the moves in phase are in discrete steps rather than the infinite drift of analog tape machines, but you can still get similar kind of patterns going. I find it quite hypnotic actually, experimenting with the effect different notes and lengths make to the overall effect. Theoretically I could listen forever but in practice it usually ends when my partner tells me to switch it off because it's driving her mad. Oh well!
     
    Last edited: Nov 19, 2021
  19. drykid

    drykid Forum Resident

    Location:
    Hereford, UK
    Philip and Steve’s Furniture Removal Company - as I said above I'm partial to this kind of slightly mathematical approach to music making, so I guess this is right up my alley. I'm torn between the final version and the alternate one; the finished version is "purer" in a way and puts its experimental nature right up front whereas the alternate one starts off as a more conventional (if repetitive) piece of music and then just when you think you're listening to something relatively normal it starts to pull the rug away from under you gradually. I think they're both valid approaches, but I admire Neil for going with the more extreme approach on the finished album. I think it's a brave experiment anyway so 4 / 5.
     
  20. TheLemmingFace

    TheLemmingFace Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    My assumption is that Office Politics' high charting was because of how good Foreverland was (to the average listener! Not so much here, clearly). Office Politics' highest chart position was in its first week, so it got there off preorders and first week sales, which will be because people remembered/heard the previous album (Foreverland) and thought "boy, this guy's still got it!". On which logic, I would expect the next album to do worse than it deserves because people will have listened to Office Politics and thought "boy, this guy's gone nuts!". Fortunately the Best Of will be a nice pallet cleanser, and should stimulate sales of whatever comes next.

    Edit - there is, it seems, no evidence to back up my assumption. Both Foreverland and Office Politics lasted two weeks in the charts; the former fell from 7 to 77, and the later from 5 to 79 in week two. A negligible difference, so perhaps their sticking power was similar.
     
    Last edited: Nov 19, 2021
  21. LivingForever

    LivingForever Forum Arachibutyrophobic Thread Starter

    Oops, I realised I did not rate "Dark Days are Here Again" - let's call it a 3.5 for this slowed-down angry "Sweden".
     
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  22. The Turning Year

    The Turning Year Lowering average scores since 2021

    Location:
    London, UK
    Thanks for this I will definitely watch that this evening.
    I am also pretty fascinated by the process of it, but am not in the least mathematical so it's all a bit mindboggling to be honest!
    I thought I understood in principle how phasing works, but while out for a walk yesterday I was really getting myself in a knot about how it comes back together again.
    Steve Reich wrote a piece for the piano in which the player does this live - moving the pattern in the left hand slightly out of alignment with the right, but I can't recall the title. (Probably 'Piano Phase'! :laugh:)
    It sounds as though Neil is phasing the vocal by half a beat each time, in line with the clapping, so as the pattern has a phrase of 4 beats then one of 5 beats, repeated twice, so when the vocal phrase starts again on the 4.5 it gets out of alignment. I don't understand how it comes back together again...
    Without having the means/ brain capacity to try it myself it's really hard to imagine how it all works! o_Oo_Oo_Oo_O
    That programme should help :agree:
     
    Last edited: Nov 19, 2021
  23. LivingForever

    LivingForever Forum Arachibutyrophobic Thread Starter

    Scores round-up time agai:

    I'm a Stranger Here scored 54.2 from 15 votes, for a preliminary score of 3.61
    Dark Days are Here Again
    scored 45.1 from 14 votes, for a score of 3.22
    Philip and Steve's Furniture Removal Company
    scored 51.9 from 13 votes, for a score of 3.99
     
  24. LivingForever

    LivingForever Forum Arachibutyrophobic Thread Starter

    Today's song is:

    'Opportunity' Knox

    We already heard what 2019 Neil had to say about this song (i.e. around him deciding on a narrative when putting the album together, that the character in this song was also the Queuejumper and the Life and Soul of the Party). I'll let others comment on what they think the story of this song is - although one thing's for sure, old Billy Bird has bought it!

     
  25. The Turning Year

    The Turning Year Lowering average scores since 2021

    Location:
    London, UK
    Opportunity Knox
    Well, no, I don't really like this. It feels like a less-interesting, less amusing and more hysterical version of Overstrand.
    I'm usually quite partial to a 'one man and piano' type thing, but not this time I'm afraid. Especially after the excitement of the last track.
    It's not helped by the fact I was never emotionally invested in the character of William Bird to begin with, and hadn't realised he was still around 15 years later. Was he still doing the business trips? I wonder whether his son still plays football, and how he reacted to his dad being bumped off? Think of the children...!
    2/5
     
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