I've always loved 'Death Of A Supernaturalist'. It feels like there are several songs competing for ownership here, flitting between an intense, almost sniping delivery and a far more genial skip along the manic harpsichord line. It opens with a sample that seems at least partly designed to weed out anyone who isn't instantly enamoured of this new phase of Hannon's musical career. I can imagine some finding a little burst of 'A Room With A View' smug or twee and jumping ship at the point, while others - us lot - were enraptured and amused at its presence. Paying tribute to a film that had inspired him early on the first album where he truly felt able to write for himself is a rather lovely thing. As ever, the message is figuratively presented and the imagery is suitably intoxicating. It has a wonderfully brief but dramatic climax that just seems to drop away like the safety net of early Nineties indie he had recently abandoned. 4/5
Strings and harpsichord drive this along from the off. Unconventional song structure and another new sound after Festive Road. There are better tracks on Liberation but I don’t mind this one. A solid 3 from me and so glad to be back after the short break.
Death of a Supernaturalist There weren't many bands in the indie era using harpsichord, cello and violin to provide a baroque/ neo classical backing track ... Neil has set his stall out that he will indeed plough his own furrow. I must concede that the lyrics to this one haven't really seeped in to my brain, but I will try and pay more attention in future. All in all, Liberation is off to a fine start. 3.5/5
Here's what The Flan in the High Castle had to say: The second track is “Death of a Supernaturalist”, a darkly energetic tale that’s essentially Hannon’s answer to the Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby”. It begins, unusually enough for Hannon, with a sample of dialogue: “My father says there’s only one perfect view, and that’s the view of the sky over our heads!” … “I expect your father has been reading Dante.” This totemic exchange is taken from the Merchant-Ivory partnership’s 1985 film A Room with a View, based on EM Forster’s 1908 novel of the same name. What really stands out here is the sheer commitment to reference: a song that pastiches a kids’ TV show segues into a quotation of dialogue from a film adaptation of a novel, the dialogue itself referencing Dante, whose Divine Comedy gave the band its name. [...] The music is similarly dense, introducing strings and an insistent, high-speed harpsichord rhythm within seconds – again, key instruments never before heard in Hannon’s music, immediately combined to lively gothic effect, jabby and keen. [...] It’s not difficult to see why Forster’s perspective, his humanity, his sheer sense of fun, would appeal to the musically inclined, mildly wayward socialist son of an Anglican bishop. Hannon’s fixation on the stultifying world of Edwardian literature, and the idea of turn-of-the-century upper-class society in general, seems to be much the same as Terry Gilliam’s relationship with bureaucracy: he knows it’s ridiculous and wrong, as do we all, but the sheer frequency with which he mentions it and enthusiasm with which he mocks it betrays a secret paradoxical fascination, an inherent aesthetic fetishism. He loves it, this world where every trivial word or action is part of some complex web of social proprieties and carefully-laid ironies, waiting to be deformed and warped and sent into convulsions by any straight-thinking interloper. [...] Searching for a way to explain Forster’s allure, Hannon brings up an Albert Camus quotation he found printed on the back of Scott Walker’s 1969 album Scott 4: “A man’s life is nothing but a slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those one or two great and simple images in whose presence his heart is first opened.” Hannon elaborates: “And that is exactly what I am trying to do, in the same sense that I was opened up to such experiences through the movie A Room with a View and people like Scott. Those moments of purity are what it’s all about, but reconnecting with all that gets more difficult as time goes on.” In other words, he views Forster’s romantic satire and Walker’s grandiose, string-laden crooning as obviously equivalent. That they have nothing to do with each other in any objective sense is glossed over, irrelevant: what matters is that, for this particular audience member, they both provide a glimpse of something sublime. They’ve pierced the veil of Hannon’s mind, becoming his guiding stars. Now he’s going to triangulate them, and show us what they showed him – through art.
Death of a Supernaturalist Well, having already introduced those of us hardy souls who made it through “the rubbish stuff” to piano and bird song - now it’s time for our first burst of the signature sound of Neil’s first two albums. Chamber group sawing and “harpsichord”* chugging set the tone for a distinctly un-rock track. (In fact it will be track 3 before we hear any drums or guitar, it’s no wonder I was bemused by this album as a teenager...) Complex, literary-referencing lyrics, unusual chord progressions, shifting time signatures (at least in the middle instrumental bit), and at least one false ending define this almost wilfully obtuse track... remind me again about how Neil hates Prog? A very hard track for me to appreciate, I think it was only when I saw it live (done in that heavier “rock” style as linked to earlier) that I started to fully get it. Now, it’s just one of many highlights on this album for me. 4.2 * I love how Neil revels in the liner notes that the “Harpsichord” is actually his Bontempi organ (as also heard on his various demos and doodles on the bonus disc...)
Death Of A Supernaturalist - 4/5. Neil's liner notes make it sound like he scrawled out the string arrangements (in his untrained way) and the players kind of deciphered what he wanted from there. I'd say those are bloody good string arrangements for a first try if that's how it really went down. Lots of great comments! Learning lots already and thinking about the songs in different ways. Keep `em coming!!
Death of a Supernaturalist 3/5 for me here. It's a promising track (I like the strings) but despite it being all verse, as someone rightly pointed out, it doesn't seem to go anywhere and the sound is a bit thin compared to more mature DC stuff.
Never thought much of this either way, and I was ready to dismiss it as something that would have fit on Fanfare: gloomy 80s indie lyric, overwrought, a bit standoffish. Almost like a Cure song, or Echo and the Bunnymen maybe (not that there's anything wrong with that). The cover-up is pretty good - the Edwardian seance-like atmosphere is there, the first Michael Nyman arrangement is welcome, especially the taut strings. But knowing the harpsichord is actually a Portasound borrowed from John Allen (@LivingForever, the Bontempi is on Europop) makes it feel even more indie to me: bass, guitar and keyboards all present. It also feels unfinished somehow - the lyric works for me, but I feel I'm missing some key to a story perhaps - who are 'you and I' in the middle? Who are they unblinkering? Is one of them the supernaturalist? Maybe none of that matters, but it irks me a bit - Hannon is rarely this obscure later on, and I don't know if it's intentionally mysterious or just lack of craft. And yet... there are so many interesting moments. I like the tension between the two worlds in mild clangers like "The National Trust don't own the air". The tight rhyme scheme, a Hannon staple, is effective - Kiss what can't be kissed, this is the risk - but it's not too tight, it still breathes. That inner rhyme on each second line moves around - for example, each verse rhymes a different word in 'feel our dead skin fall away'. And the death in the first verse is reflected in the rebirth in the third verse (recapitulation of see / touch / kiss). Then there's the somewhat ambiguous title: in the poem, Death of a Naturalist is a sardonic reference to a boy's changing attitude to nature; in the same sense, Death of a Supernaturalist could be someone realising there was no life after death, perhaps even on their deathbed - a grim prospect. But instead, there seems to be a genuine supernatural rebirth - the supernaturalist's weird ideas were right all along! Rejoice! (Just as Hannon might have been feeling about his own transition - maybe that could explain why the song is placed here, rather than one of the catchier songs.) And the middle 8 is rather glorious - another appeal to join in with this mad adventure, of which there will be plenty more on the albums to come. Still, I'm not going to go higher than 2.5/5 for this - it's not that it's bad, there are just so many songs I prefer. But if they all get this much better with close listening this is going to be a great experience.
Today’s song is Bernice Bobs Her Hair, track 3 on “Liberation”. Another one of the tracks with its origins in the “band days”, as Neil recalls in his new liner notes: We also learn that the song changed quite a bit along the way... And a bit more info about the story from ashortsite: Here’s the song:
Some more musings from The Flan in the High Castle on the meaning of "supernaturalist" including a reason why it's not the "you" addressed in the song: We’re not told who (or what) this dying “supernaturalist” is – especially strange in that Hannon is not normally one to coin words – but logically, it should refer to something which bears the same relationship to “naturalist” that “supernatural” bears to “natural”. However, this complicates things further, as “naturalist” has numerous meanings of its own. In the most common sense of “naturalist”, meaning “one who studies nature”, a “supernaturalist” might be an individual who spends their time analysing the world of the numinous or the strange, while the philosophical sense, “one who believes only in natural forces”, suggests it might be someone with reverse-atheist’s logical commitment to the unreal. In the artistic or literary sense, “one who portrays the world realistically”, it would seem that a “supernaturalist” is an artist who paints or writes according to their own supernatural perceptions – in other words, a Blakean visionary, quite distinct from a mere fantasist. These all seem to be plausible readings. Lines like “See what can’t be seen / Between the table and the chair / Touch what can’t be touched / The National Trust don’t own the air” seem to support the former idea of supernaturalist-as-observer, while the song’s repeating command to “feel the dead skin fall away” suggests a kind of gothic transhumanism; an escape from the flesh. The eponymous character is mentioned only once – “Touch the autumn sky / Burned by the supernaturalist” – but the use of the third person is enough for us to infer that it’s not the one Hannon is singing to. In short, it’s just an unknowable other; someone with the power to burn the sky, and someone whose death this song must indirectly describe (unless its title is ironic). Is the supernaturalist Mr Emerson, the father from A Room with a View, who “burns” the sky with his admiration – changing it in the eyes of others? Is it Dante himself, cataloguing the circles of heaven and hell in all their transcendent architecture? It’s one of the album’s quiet mysteries.
And here’s the demo Neil mentions - this was one of the most interesting for me on the new boxset, as it’s another “jangle-pop” take on a familiar song. And with completely different lyrics... “this is my Euro Vision”?
I would never have thought that it would get a lower score (albeit ever so slightly) than "Festive Road", but then I was the one who gave it the highest score.
Well, there's no shortage of songs with no chorus (or arguably no chorus), including some of Hannon's best and best-known songs: Lucy, The Summerhouse, Songs of Love, In Pursuit of Happiness, Generation Sex, Our Mutual Friend, Diva Lady...
Bernice Bobs Her Hair I have never cared much for this track, musically or lyrically. I think it might have been one of the songs that I heard at the time of the album's release that somewhat put me off. I should explain that I first heard about the band when I read Melody Maker's review of Liberation. i was attracted by the description of the record, the band name, the album title and the song title "I Was Born Yesterday". Then I heard them play a session during the first week of the Mark Radcliffe Radio 1 evening show, a show of which I was an instant devotee. I probably didn't stay up to hear the whole session, but I heard enough to retain my mild curiosity about the band but not impressed enough to buy the record. I think they played the aforementioned "I Was Born Yesterday" - I'm sure this is all fully documented. (Promenade completely passed me by and the next I heard of the band was when R1 started playing "Songs of Love" in advance of the release of Casanova). I'm going to slightly get ahead now and say that I think the run of three songs - "Supernaturalist", "Bernice" and "I Was Born Yesterday" are a big problem for me on this album. Spread across the album, it might be fine, but all in a row it's too much. All three of them have harsh mixolydian tunes with only their middle eights and this song's ba-ba-ba chorus to relieve the tension. And this is before we've even had any of the album's many highlights. In my opinion. I'm not going to go lower than 3/5, as this is more of a sequencing issue than anything.
I love Bernice Bobs Her Hair - a clever but jaunty backing track, a great adaptation of a short story... I think it's irresistible, and the first example (chronologically) of what I personally love about Hannon's writing. I really like listening to Festive Road/Supernaturalist/Bernice/Born Yesterday as a suite (I think it's great sequencing), but Bernice is the only one of these that I return to as a song in its own right.
Well, I suppose often when we talk about sequencing issues, maybe we're actually talking about something more basic, what we personally like and dislike. You really like the style and music of these songs, so for you More is Better, and your pleasure is only enhanced by them being sequenced one after the other. Whereas for me its the reverse. I hope it's understood I'm only ever speaking for myself and my own foibles.
Bernice Bobs Her Hair Now we have drums, bass and guitar to add to the harpsichord sounds... I really enjoy the arrangement, but the main melody and the lyrics don't do much for me. However, the use of the harmony vocals are excellent on this track and really add to the production. Oh, and a lovely use of the Tierce de Picarde at the end... where a minor key melody finishes on a major chord. 3.5/5
Bernice Bobs Her Hair is, for me, the first truly great Divine Comedy song. Odd, then, that it most closely resembles what we heard of Fanfare. The demo version is even more closely linked to the earlier style. The song is probably the most conventional indie/rock song on the album, but it's performed with confidence and lightness which is far beyond anything from the earlier years. Again, a strong showcase for Neil's voice - both the lead vocal and the harmony parts are delivered brilliantly, and there's a real variation in tone in the backing vocals especially as the song goes on. There's also a lot to be said for the guitar part here. This is a song which is easy to play in a simplified form, but on the recording there are a whole lot of very unusual chords being played - it took me ages to work these out when I tried to tackle it (many years ago now). This would go on to be a feature of Neil's work - he may not be a virtuoso guitarist, but his chord sequences are excellent. A 'highest-so-far' 4.5/5 from me.
Wow. I don't think I've ever seen anyone mention mixolydian mode on this forum before...! You're of course right, which explains to my brain what my ears have always heard as being a bit "odd". I stand by my interpretation that we have quite a different class of correspondent in this thread than others I've read here (and don't get me started on Facebook groups!)
