Timewatching: The Divine Comedy Album-by-album thread

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

  1. LivingForever

    LivingForever Forum Arachibutyrophobic Thread Starter

    RIGHT!


    Don't Mention the War

    An actual finished Divine Comedy song. Released as a digital single on the 24th of October 2019 and then included on the soundtrack for the Amazon TV series "Modern Love" in December 2019. I have no other info on this song, sadly. Was it a leftover from the "Office Politics" sessions? Or was it specially recorded? Who knows...

     
    Last edited: Nov 29, 2021
  2. ericthegardener

    ericthegardener Forum Resident

    Location:
    Dallas, TX
    Don't Mention the War

    This is almost a very good song. For me, there is something not quite right about the chords under the words "What good is it for?" in the chorus, but I can't quite figure out why it is bothering me. The rest of it I like quite a bit. 3/5
     
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  3. The Turning Year

    The Turning Year Lowering average scores since 2021

    Location:
    London, UK
    Don't Mention The War
    I hadn't heard this before and am not quite sure about it. I don't know this TV series at all.
    On the one hand it sounds a bit twee, but on the other it is pretty and nostalgic, and has a lovely galloping merrry-go-round feel to it.
    3.5/5
     
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  4. christian42

    christian42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Lund, Sweden
    Don't Mention the War

    I hadn't heard this one before, though I'd heard OF it. The introduction doesn't say much about how the rest of the song is going to sound... But this is a pretty good one. Better than "Best Mistakes" by quite a margin. There's a memorable melody, and while the instrumentation seems more focused on acoustic guitars than the average TDC song it still sounds like just that, a TDC song. It's a missed opportunity that it's not included on the Greatest Hits - the OCD collector in me gets annoyed by these stray tracks.

    4.1
     
  5. jon-senior

    jon-senior Forum Resident

    Location:
    Eastleigh
    Don't Mention The War

    I really like this one. It sounds more like a Foreverland era track than an Office Politics leftover (though we know the songs from both we're written over the same period of course). I'd rate it higher than quite a lot of Foreverland, though I can see why it didn't fit thematically, if it was ever considered for it. Its got a lovely feel to it - not groundbreaking, admittedly, but a solid example of what it is. The opening part of the melody, and the rhythm put me in mind of Simon and Garfunkel's America, but I imagine that's a coincidence rather than a direct influence.

    It's a real shame that this track is likely to go generally unheard. I assume it's not on the box set (or, indeed, on Charmed Life) due to licensing issues - if not, it feels like a serious blunder on someone's part.

    4/5
     
  6. Vagabone

    Vagabone Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    Don't Mention the War
    I listened to this a few times when it first showed up on Spotify, before deciding it wasn't a keeper, and let it slide to the back of my mind.
    It's hard to hear what's wrong with it: on paper it's excellent. It just doesn't thrill me somehow.
    (Need we mention that the title comes from a famous scene in Fawlty Towers? or at least that's the association most people would have with it, I would presume.)
    3/5
     
  7. a paul

    a paul Forum Resident

    Location:
    London
    War
    I've heard this at least a couple of times, presumably on Spotify, as it's a bit familiar. It's a nice tune, and wouldn't have minded if it popped up on the forthcoming bonus cd. 3.8
     
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  8. Dalav

    Dalav Forum Resident

    Location:
    New Jersey
    Don't Mention The War

    I'll echo @Vagabone's comments, in that it's not a direct hit of the emotional sweet-spot for me even though all indications musically are that it should. The pieces are there --violin, cello, acoustic guitars, even an accordion adding a bit of french resistance cafe to bedevil @LivingForever ;). It's smooth and enjoyable, with a nice intro, and the waltzy nature is spirited....but just missing something I can't pinpoint. Relatablitity, maybe. Still...

    Nice call out to Fawlty Towers. Great scene.

    3.9/5
     
  9. Radiophonic_

    Radiophonic_ Electrosonic

    Location:
    Royal Oak MI
    “Don’t Mention the War”: After learning this song was included (composed for?) in the Amazon series Modern Love, I checked out the episode in question (episode 4 of season 1). The song features in the final scene, where the main characters have reconciled, so I assume the song reflects some intention to not discuss what caused the rupture in their relationship. This is a bit weird, as the characters have no issue discussing it up to that point. My assumption is that if this was composed for the show, the brief was too vague or he was told to keep it vague. The score for the episode also features accordion and sounds more or less similar, so I’m assuming the song came first? Because we all know Neil does not need encouragement to bring out the accordion! Which is fine by me, may I add.

    This is a track I enjoyed from the first hearing, though it perhaps lacks that something that pushes it beyond the merely very fine. So, 4/5
     
  10. LivingForever

    LivingForever Forum Arachibutyrophobic Thread Starter

    Yes, indeed. I imagine there’s room for it on that bonus CD. Frankly it’s annoying that it wasn’t on the Office Politics bonus disc - I mean, it would be tough, but if I had to I would sacrifice 2, maybe even all 3 of those Mellotron tracks to fit it on. ;)

    Ha, yeah I don’t disagree with that. It feels more artistically worthwhile although (or perhaps because) the melody is less obviously commercial.

    First thing I thought too! The rhythm and the melody of that first bit both made my mind go there.

    Yeah; it’s a head scratcher. Perhaps part of the licensing deal with the programme was that it had to be exclusive to the soundtrack album for a certain period of time?

    Anyway -

    Don’t Mention The War

    I like this one, it’s jaunty and fun, perhaps mirroring the “head in the sand”/ “La La La I can’t hear you” message in the lyrics.

    It’s a proper full production, isn’t it? Full strings, accordion and all. I’d love to know when it was recorded - seems unlikely Neil would get all these people together just to record a song for a soundtrack, but perhaps he would if the money was right!

    A really nice melody and the arrangement really sings - it’s a 4 from me.
     
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  11. christian42

    christian42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Lund, Sweden
    Do we know for sure that it was specifically recorded for the soundtrack, and if so, that it was not recorded during an album’s sessions?
     
  12. Hazey John II

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

    Yes. "Could we get Songs of Love, but, you know, better?" Solid hack work. Putting the chorus in 15/8 to keep himself amused maybe. 2/5
    We'll know if @LivingForever starts doing Juveneilia in full. (More seriously, have we covered everything from the spectacular and foundational "What's missing from the boxset?" post? Looks like it to me, bar one to come...)
     
  13. A Tea-Loving Dave

    A Tea-Loving Dave Forum Resident

    Location:
    Northumberland, UK
    Mind you, the fact that 32nd place still ends up with a de-facto score of 82.4% rather shows how solid the material which has beaten it really is! Even the lowest of the low has ended up with 44.4%, which is a distinctly *average*score rather than a *low* score per se.

    I certainly feel like I was relatively positive about the album, and gave plenty of high-end scores, yet ended up smack bang in the middle as far as overall ranking went!

    A nice little track, flowing up and down with Neil's vocals and the backing instrumentals working well together - as so often is the case! Musically it sounds quite akin to some of the mid-period tracks somehow, although I cannot put my finger on precisely how!

    3.5/5
     
  14. christian42

    christian42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Lund, Sweden
    I think some of that may be because we're all rating according to different criteria. For my own part I have two "rules" that I follow - first, if I feel that a track is deserving of joining my playlist, then it has to merit at least a 3.5, and second, since TDC is generally a really good band, I can't hand out too many low scores, because there are very few tracks that I really, truly dislike. And that skews my scores towards the higher end of the scale.
     
  15. LivingForever

    LivingForever Forum Arachibutyrophobic Thread Starter

    Good point! There is only one thing I can see which hasn’t been mentioned yet, and that’s a version of “With a Little Help From My Friends” with Lisa Hanningan, Cathy Davey and many others including Neil - which was released on a compilation EP by the Dublin-based record label “Lovesvinyl” at some point in 2019.

    I don’t have this EP, and I have this track written down as a 2019 recording on my list, however I’ve just found a YouTube video of what is presumably the same performance, which was posted 8 years ago, so I guess that would actually make it a 2013(?) recording. Anyway, hardly essential especially if you’re looking for significant Neil content , but here it is anyway!

     
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  16. LivingForever

    LivingForever Forum Arachibutyrophobic Thread Starter

    No, honestly we don’t know anything! I think that was my point - surely it must have been recorded along with the songs for “Foreverland” or “Office Politics” and shelved? Maybe I’ll have to buy the soundtrack album on vinyl and read the credits to find out…
     
  17. LivingForever

    LivingForever Forum Arachibutyrophobic Thread Starter

    This is very true- definitely people have used different scoring criteria, which is one of the things that makes this all so unscientific.

    That, plus people being influenced by other people’s scores. I’m pretty sure there’s been at least once that I scored higher than I might have, purely because I thought a song was not getting a fair appraisal from others!
     
  18. LivingForever

    LivingForever Forum Arachibutyrophobic Thread Starter

    Divine Comedy History Lesson, Part 44

    Right, well, the fantastic chronology from ashortsite runs out at the end of 2019, so from hereon in this is entirely from my own memory - please feel free to correct and/or add to this.

    The 9th of March 2020 is a momentous day for Divine Comedy fans, as the news we’ve been expecting since the early 2000s finally comes to pass - the entire back catalogue will be reissued in August, lovingly remastered on vinyl and CD, and with a positive cornucopia of bonus tracks! Not only that, but the band will be playing all of their albums (minus Office Politics) at a 5-night residency in London in September this year. (Honestly, I cannot remember the last music-related thing that made me this excited!)

    And then, within a matter of days, the world goes into freefall and plans are thrown into disarray. The gigs are eventually rescheduled to 2021, because obviously the pandemic will be over by then (!), and then again to September 2022 because it can’t possibly be still going on then, surely, can it? (We’ll see!)

    Neil has mentioned in an interview or two that he’s actually secretly pleased about this delay as the band had been panicking about whether they’d be able to learn all the material in time, and that now he’s confident they’ll do a good job of it - so no excuse for forgetting the lyrics after 2 and a half years’ prep, Neil!

    The boxset is also delayed, though only until
    October 2020, and there’s eventually a very happy day in many a TDC fan’s household, discovering all these amazing bonus tracks for the first time and checking out just how great the albums sound now.

    The delay has afforded some extra time for content - I’m not entirely sure what gets added, but one thing that is definitely new is a 2020 remix of “Promenade” by Guy Massey- sadly it’s not done in time to make it to the physical releases, but is released at the same time as a download-only bonus.

    I’m going to pause here so people can share their thoughts about the boxset and reissues before we go into “what Neil did during lockdown”…


     
  19. The Turning Year

    The Turning Year Lowering average scores since 2021

    Location:
    London, UK
    Box set etc
    This is the first 'proper' box set I've bought (I have a little box of 3 Duke Special EPs, but not sure that counts!). It's also the first item I have ever pre-ordered.

    I ummed and aahed for months about whether to order it or not.
    I already had all the albums, and TDC (and pop music in general) had really dropped off my radar, and did I really need 12 discs worth of weird demos and whatever?
    Eventually, after being bombarded by all their facebook posts looking nostalgically back at the past albums, I decided I really did need 12 discs worth of weird demos :D
    For those who didn't see them, they posted a lovely little article about each album, written by someone who was involved at the time (Darren Allison, Kevin Westenburg, Joby Talbot among others).
    It reminded me of how much it all meant to me as a teenager and how much I really fancied ahem, sorry, wanted to be like Neil Hannon when I was 16 :laugh: , and really it's not that expensive is it? And it's lockdown - it only costs as much as 2 weeks' travel to work plus lunches/coffee/misc unnecessary expenses, so why not?

    And I haven't regretted that decision, although before it actually arrived I did think about seeing if I could cancel the order several times...!
    I hadn't appreciated that it would have a limited run, and almost just left it thinking I could just get it at any time, so am glad I didn't do that.

    It looks lovely, and I do like all the sleeves and design etc. It is really well thought out and of course it is named after a (rather hideous!) renaissance painting and looks like a set of books :love: (and that's what my husband thought it was).
    I haven't spent much time listening to the extra discs or the very first album, so will probably listen to them all the way through at some stage. And I haven't finished reading the notes.

    I have no comments whatsoever on the remastering as I'm sure I would not be able to tell the difference, but people seem to have been positive about it.

    It seems that everything about the box set is well-done, which must be a benefit of Neil having control over it all rather than having a record company in charge.

    Of course some songs are not there, and there are a few too many versions of a couple of things for my liking, but really I don't care.
    This is effectively a career retrospective, so curation is necessary and expected, and I think the balance between showing the working process and including actual additional songs (b-sides, live and unreleased songs) is very good, and is particularly interesting on the bonus discs for earlier albums.

    I gave that Promenade remix a couple of listens on a streaming free trial and am now interested enough to actually buy it.

    (I still haven't decided what to do with the old copies of the albums).
     
  20. jon-senior

    jon-senior Forum Resident

    Location:
    Eastleigh
    Ah, the box set.

    I remember the excitement I felt when there was first talk of a serious set of Divine Comedy reissues, and then over the years, that excitement dwindling when nothing seemed to be happening. Then the market for lavish reissues properly took off, and I began to construct fantasy sets is my head imagining what the collection might contain, and what it might look like. My worry became that, if they ever happened at all, the reissues would be too expensive - could I really justify buying all the albums again? What if they only contained the existing b-sides as extra material? What if, horror of horrors, they only contained one or two unreleased tracks and I had to choose between spending a fortune to obtain those tracks or letting them escape.

    Then, out of nowhere, it appeared. No warning, no indication - it just landed on the DC twitter feed one lunchtime with a track list and a price. £125? That was basically £10 an album - couldn't argue with that.

    It was, and remains, the most expensive musical product I've ever bought. Instant pre-order, no regrets.
     
  21. LivingForever

    LivingForever Forum Arachibutyrophobic Thread Starter

    That was a very expensive week -

    CD Boxset
    All the vinyl reissues
    2 x front row tickets for all 5 Barbican gigs…

    :eek:
     
  22. LivingForever

    LivingForever Forum Arachibutyrophobic Thread Starter

    The Reissues

    I have to say these are some of the best reissues I've ever bought. The remastering has managed to make the albums sound better and not just louder, which is a rarity! There are some disappointments in a few of the bonus tracks and "Juveneilia" tracks having glitches and/or being worse quality than what was already available, but these are few and don't completely ruin the experience.

    I know I compiled that ridiculous list of what was not included on the boxset, but honestly I have all those tracks in other places, and I think I would have been more annoyed if the bonus discs *had* only contained those and not all this previously unheard stuff that we did get.

    Now, we've gone through all these bonus discs on the thread, and I've also listened to them all several times and now I feel like I have a good idea of what I find worth listening to multiple times I thought I'd make a list below of which of these new archival tracks are "keepers". (I've excluded anything which had been previously released before the boxset...)

    Juveneilia: All the "October" tracks, honestly, but especially October and Stream of Unconsciousness.
    Liberation Leftovers: Queen of the South (demo - with the glitches fixed!), Bernice Bobs Her Hair (early version), I Was Born Yesterday (early demo)
    Apropos of Promenade: Assume the Goldsmith, Bath (alternate version), Only for Tonight
    Casanova: Behind the Cravat: Grinchworm, Solsbury Eel, Electro Wurly Groove, Through a Long and Sleepless Night (early idea)
    A Short Album About Love: Teach us to Love..? Maybe?
    Le Debut de la Fin: umm, struggle with this one. Lots of good stuff, but it's all previously released B-sides. Then Four Buses Came Along at Once is at least interesting!
    Hesitations, Deviations and Repetitions: How's Your Wireless? . Garden Cities, Timestretched (demo), Mastermind (rehearsal "country" version), The Night is Not Enough
    Long Lost Friends: The Dark Horse, All Things (without the computer voices!), Smiler, Our Mutual Friend (alternate synth version), Antidepressant, Charmed Life (drum and bass version)
    Additional Musings: Home (demo), Trafalgar, Love/Hate Relationship, Guantanamo, A Little Bit of Love (Goes a Long Long Way)
    More Sordid Details: Assume the Perpendicular (alternate version), Have You Ever Been in Love? (alternate version), What's Wrong With You?
    Foreverland - Plan of Attack: Napoloeon Complex (alternate version), How Can You Bear Not to be Me?, One Ear Up, One Ear Down (demo), Pictures, ARP Break, Who Were We
    Office Politics - Overtime: The Divine Comedy Ltd, Where Have all the Milkmen Gone?, The Life and Soul of the Party (both alternate versions), The Berlin Airlift, Pop Muzik, Turning Japanese, Philip and Steve (early version).
     
  23. christian42

    christian42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Lund, Sweden
    The Box Set

    I am a collector, so I'm fairly used to buying box sets. But this is one of the nicest looking sets I've got in my possession. It's very well designed and looks really good on the shelf.

    I'm not an audiophile, so I can't comment on those aspects. In many respects, this box set included a whole bunch of material that I wouldn't have expected to see.

    It is therefore unfortunate that there were a handful of already released tracks that were not included. The inner completist in me is quite disappointed in that. Especially since there were quite a lot of demos that could have been excluded since they didn't really bring much to the table in way of new-ness.

    But I do have those tracks in other places, and therefore my positive feelings still outweigh my disappointment. It's one of the best box sets I own.
     
  24. LivingForever

    LivingForever Forum Arachibutyrophobic Thread Starter

    Yeah I would say the omission of the few previously-released, Neil-written songs that didn't make it to the boxset was a bit strange. When you got past all the missing covers, live tracks and alternate versions, the missing songs actually boil down to:

    Soul Destroyer
    I Am
    This Side of Paradise
    Too Young to Die
    Oscar the Hypno-Dog
    Don't Mention the War

    (leaving out co-writes with other artists...)

    I'm quite sure there would have been space to fit them somewhere. But perhaps Neil just didn't think them worthy of a spot any more ...
     
  25. drykid

    drykid Forum Resident

    Location:
    Hereford, UK
    Turning Japanese - never was a massive fan of the original, although I know it's a fondly-remembered new wave track for a lot of people. It all seemed a bit puerile to me though. Anyway slowing it down doesn't improve it much, although admittedly it's not as bad as some of these slowed-down folky acoustic covers of uptempo pop songs that are a plague in television adverts at the moment. euch. Someone mentioned Ghosts by Japan in passing but there's a couple of bits in this (first one at 0:50) which actually *do* sound like Ghosts a tiny bit and made me wonder if they were there as part of an elaborate pun. Probably just my imagination though! 1 / 5

    Nordyland '83 - another one that I have very little to say about other than to point out (again) its inconsequential nature. Maybe a hint of Vince Clarke-era Depeche Mode in there somewhere, but still 1/ 5
     
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