To The Rescue Little to add here after reading everyone else's comments. Catherine The Great is probably my favourite on the album, but this it every but as good - probably better - and it deserves its status as a classic. Lyrically lovely - I'd echo the praise for the 'I'm more proud of you' line, an unusual sentiment in song, I guess, but perfectly pitched. I'm also a big fan of the overlapping vocal line in the chorus - especially the eway which the first 'To the rescue' can be sung as part of the lead line, but the second is underneath the lead. That's a good trick. And, as many others have said, the outro is a great example of its type even if its a trick Neil has used before. The string descent before the trumpet solo is my favourite bit, but it's all lovely. Only the very very end seems a little unsure - a good ending, but bit quite a perfect one, perhaps. Still, a 5/5 all in all.
To The Rescue For me this is one of a pair with The Pact - to the extent that I think it’s quite bold to sequence them right next to each other… Unless you’re trying really hard to make a point or something… As I said yesterday, this song very much applies to elements of my personal life - so I've always liked it. However, I'll echo what a lot of people here have already said - it didn't stand out at first, above other album tracks on Foreverland. Now it has grown on me and I completely get why it is acclaimed. I was very pleased when it was released as a late single, partly because I liked the video a lot more than the other videos, and partly because I felt it was much more representative of the album than the other singles were. 5/5
Have to agree - the best case for the mature Divine Comedy, showboating self-obsession giving way to a deep appreciation of the quiet, determined work of others. The voice may be a shadow of what it was, but there's something in this that's beyond the exuberant pleasures of Promenade, or the luxurious melancholia of Absent Friends. The best track on the album by far, but it sounds even better on Charmed Life, where the sequencing brings out its full weight and power. 5/5 (My Lovely Horse Rescue has a donations page.)
Thanks for the pm, @LivingForever - I get an email alert for those, but they end up in my junk which I at least checked this evening! At least it means I've listened to the first set of songs in a row a couple of times to kind of compare: Napoleon - better than the previous demo, although I liked that. I'll give it a high 4.5 Foreverland - couldn't remember this song based on its title, and will probably forget it again in the future. It is nice enough, has its moments, but unfortunately some of its moments are Swallows And Amazon's and so I'll give it a 2 Catherine - I wasn't that happy when this first came out. I think it added to me thinking Neil was a bit hit and miss nowadays (thenadays). I sort of don't mind it though. And like the deep voiced singing little bit. A generous 3 Funny Peculiar - I think I used to quite dislike this one. And I possibly still do, but maybe I'm a bit more indifferent with my dislike. Will give it a 2.5 Pact - file this along with Foreverland in that I will mostly have no idea what it sounds like if I'm not listening to it. I think I seem to associate it with the amazing The Plough. But no. It's nowhere near as good. I think my break from listening and rating TDC means that I don't hate it, but just to have a nice range in my scores to differentiate between the ones I really to like, then I'm giving this 1.5 Rescue - I don't remember my initial thoughts of this song. I surely must have liked it, but maybe the uncertainty of the album just meant I didn't spend much time with it. I agree with all of the comments that have given it top marks. Definitely one of my favourite Divine Comedy songs. I can't remember if any of the other songs will come close to it, but probably not. 5
To The Rescue As with the other overrated two songs above, I don't understand what all the fuss is about. I applaud Davey's work for animal welfare and like the sentiment of the song, but for me the musical formula is already wearing thin (maybe because I wasn't that enamoured by it to begin with). "Our Mutual Friend" was more dramatic both musically and lyrically, so this is more in line with "A Lady Of A Certain Age" in its pleasant inoffensiveness, but even that had a bitter twist and was more of a story than "To The Rescue". I think all of them are a bit too long and leave me slightly bored by the end. Don't get me wrong, it's still a very good song, but as with the other two, I can't justify giving it more than a 4. To be honest, usually having all three of them in the same setlist for concerts of this tour becomes a bit of a chore, and I always find myself looking forward to the next song. At least "Our Mutual Friend" was dropped for the last tour.
Thanks for this, I hadn't realised there was a video for this one! Having just watched it I agree with all you've said about it. I feel the same about all 3 songs you've mentioned. Lady... I like for it's storyline, but do find myself waiting for it to finish rather than getting lost in the intrumental section. With Foreverland, there are quite a few of these coda-type bits, and it's taken me a while to accept that they are not In Pursuit of Happiness or The Certainty of Chance, but I've enjoyed it a lot more since I have I haven't been to any recent TDC concerts, but from videos of this tour Neil seemed to need a couple of costume changes and some time to lie on the floor, so maybe they are on the setlist for practical reasons...?
Track 7 on Foreverland, today’s song is: How Can You Leave Me On My Own? Detailing what Neil gets up to when Cathy goes away… (although, I sort of hope some of this is fictional, otherwise - too much information, Neil ) And here’s another video, too:
Getting in early as have a family day out planned. How Can You Leave Me On My Own I find the way this sounds really quite appealing; the groovy piano part, oboe solo, and sort of kettle drums sound that comes in during the 'cave man' verse are highlights. However, the lyrical idea just doesn't appeal to me or even provoke a smile beyond a first listen. Parts of this do quite acurately describe me when my husband is away (well, pre-child!), but I don't particularly want to listen to a jaunty song about it more than once, so I tend to skip this one. @LivingForever I agree about this giving a bit too much information, a theme that unfortunately continues on the next album...! Like the song, the video is quite enjoyable the first time around but that's it. Neil gets his signature sideways slidey move in there, as per National Express video and reprised in the recent BBC documentary. (I have tried to do that when at home alone - can't! But then I am probably too worried about crashing into the prized family Chinese porcelain...). A good thing about it is that it's not the demo version...! 1.5/5
How Can You Leave Me On My Own To me, quite a tuneless song to be releasing as a single or featured track. But I guess the slightly bluesy, and relatively rocking nature of it made it feel enough like a new departure for Neil, or at least a side to him that not enough people had heard. Probably the lyrics successfully said something he really wanted to say too. I have to say, though I know many people will relate to these lyrics, I am not one of them. I love having some alone time. For me, this is nothing more than a middle-range album track. 3/5 If you like the lyrics, I urge you to try this Jeffrey Lewis song, its lyrical twin from 2015 (actually 2014 really), which to me is so much better.
How Can You Leave Me On My Own? Having made various negative comments about the running order of Foreverland before now, here's a moment where Neil gets it spot on, I think. Following the deeply sincere and heartfelt To The Rescue with this is a work of genius. Top much information? Yes - but the self-deprecation here is funny and, in its own way, charming. I never imagined Neil using the word 'dickhead' in a song, so that took a bit of getting used to, but the deliberate immaturity to that (and to the 'naked ladies') works in context. It's also nice to hear something a bit more uptempo at this stage in the album. Not a classic, but good fun, and a welcome change of pace so 3.5/5 from me. The demo version from boxset is all-out hilarious. It couldn't possibly have gone the album, and I can't imagine what possessed him to record it in the first place, but I love it - when he switches the lyric to 'I am the best at everything' it brings a tear to the eye. It's exactly what I wanted out of an expensive box set, so if you're reading this and haven't heard it before, don't skip it over. It's unscoreable though, obviously.
(Oops, I didn’t participate yesterday!) To the Rescue I’ll join the chorus of “this has really grown on me”- in fact the first time I heard it was at that Paris gig I posted the performance from yesterday, some 5 months before the album came out, and I think I thought “oh, this will be the skipping track” Anyway, over the years maybe I’ve understood it more, or become more sentimental, but either way I now think it’s lovely- it’s a very pretty tune (in the chorus at least) but the arrangement wins it for me, especially that trumpet solo towards the end. However; I can’t rate it quite as highly as my all-time faves so it gets a 4.5
100% agreed - I can’t listen to this enough times, it’s so self-aggrandising it basically goes round the other way and makes it seem self-deprecating…
How Can You Leave Me on My Own? I have to echo everything @jon-senior says. This track comes as a breath of fresh air after a couple of tracks of thorough sentimentality - not that there's anything wrong with that - and gets the album going with some uptempo music. The lyrics are quite amusing to me (and although, like @Vagabone, I enjoy my solitude, it doesn't negate the fact that most of what we do in our lonesomeness is generally not the kind of stuff you tell all your friends about). Sorry, BTW, I have no idea what Jeffrey Lewis is singing in the song you linked to, he's singing much too fast and in an accent that is hard to understand for my poor foreign ears. The demo is exactly the type of alternative version that I like to see on box sets. While the melody is identical to the finished track, here we have a very different lyric, which is perhaps even more amusing than the finished track. 4.2
That’s interesting! I immediately thought “ha, Neil singing about how great he is”… but now you come to mention it, perhaps it is aimed at someone else who thinks they’re the bees knees?
Is it Friday or Monday, I'm not sure, without you All the days go by in such a boring blur, without you I hit the snooze ten times before I stir, without you I get up but I can't recall what for, without you The house plants aren't doing very well, without you The recycling starts to pile up and smell, without you My sense of up or down goes straight to hell, without you Now is it time to go back to bed yet? I can't tell without you There's food I bought that I don't bother eating, without you And in the garbage go the groceries I'm not needing, without you I got an old half-cup of coffee I'm reheating, without you I don't go out because there's no one I'm meeting, without you And there's no way I'd spray the shower curtain grimes, without you Why try to rid the kitchen sink of slime, without you? Why stop that lousy cockroach while he climbs, without you? I still can't finish Friday's crossword in the Times, without you She's outta town, she's outta town She's outta town visiting her mother And I tell a joke but don't nobody laugh, without you Because I'm like a tall tree with no giraffe, without you My stock has dropped so low it's off the graph, without you And it's only been one weekday and a half, without you So is it Friday or Monday? I'm not sure, without you All the days go by in such a boring blur, without you I hit the snooze ten times before I stir, without you I get up but I can't recall what for, without you
That's possible - it's never occurred to me, but there's no reason why not. I hope not though - it's much funnier if he's singing it about himself, and he's spoken / written lots of times about his ego, whether sincerely or not, so I'd definitely see this as the ultimate send up of that.
How lovely, a first even at this late stage - the first DC video to improve my opinion of a song. Never really enjoyed this one much - a bit too prosaic, I can do without the rockin' oboe, and the too much information always bothered me (funny how we all seem to know exactly which bit we're talking about there). But the video, which I'd never seen before, really made me laugh. Napoleon doing 80s keep fit, riding a bike round the halls, searching through the library for naughty pictures - that's comedy. Strange how personal and subtle humour is; I have no idea why this video should work for me when the Catherine The Great one doesn't. The demo is funny too, but over-egging the pudding - it doesn't do anything that Napoleon Complex doesn't achieve, and even that's familiar ground really. Instead, the final version fills in a bit more of the album's sort-of theme - the transition from Napoleon's narcissism to To The Rescue's patient stoicism. As I said before, the personal, present-day material doesn't really gel with the historical stuff for me, but the video helps - this is how Neil is in his head, which is ridiculous, but a symbol for how closed and self-centred he has been (or at least, sees himself to be). So this is the complex in collapse, maturing into something else. Of course, this is wishful thinking on my part, I don't think the album really follows through as a thematic album like the 90s albums - there's no feeling of an arc like Casanova or Fin de Siècle and I don't think it could be resequenced to make one. But it's notable that the self-centredness, a key part of all the albums prior to this, is almost absent on Office Politics. 4/5
How can you leave me on my own? As @LivingForever says, TMI, Neil. But you have to admire the candour, I guess. It’s certainly creepy at times and could be seen as transferring responsibility for his own (in)actions to the absent party, but it’s also clearly self deprecating: the braying donkey up front signals that Neil knows he’s being an ass. And it does nail dysfunctional male anti social behaviour. On this listen through, I was very struck by the line which goes something like ‘I want to go outside but decide not to risk it,’ which speaks to potential serious social anxiety and mental ill health. Certainly interesting in light of recent global events that we’ve all experienced. 2/5
I enjoyed How Can You Leave Me On My Own quite a lot when it first came out, though it's not one that lasts super long in the memory. A bit like Queuejumper very catchy and immediate but it's a love affair that doesn't last more than a few weeks. I do like the instrumentation a lot, a real toe tapper. Also a bonus half mark for an excellent deployment of 'dickhead' which I always enjoy. I have a lot of sympathy with the lyrics. Just yesterday my partner went to a wedding and despite grand plans of productivity I spent almost the entire day on the sofa watching football, drinking beer and eating unhealthy food. 3.5/5
Leave Me I'm the opposite to @lazzaa in that I really disliked this song (and not impressed with Queue Jumper) on first listen(s). For this song, the lyrics and topic just seemed a bit too silly. But I ended up liking both songs a bit more. I absolutely love the "Oboe" bit, followed by the oboe solo - clear highlight of the song for me. 3 Nice to see/hear a Jeffrey Lewis song, although I only really know (and like) his first album or two - especially his first album which I loved.
How Can You Leave Me on My Own? Good for a couple of listens, but ultimately boring to me. (Is this supposed to be like ELO's Don't Bring Me Down?) 2/5
Thanks! These are funny as well, though I'm not sure about the lines going "one weekday and a half" followed by "is it Friday or Monday?" - they contradict each other. Internal logic is important, you know!
