SONGS THAT SAVED MY LIFE #13: BAROQUE & ROLL........,

Over the years i've bought quite a few albums without knowing anything about the artist or the music contained within, or knowing very little. Sometimes this has led to some amazing discoveries and widened my musical tastes, turning me on to genres and artists i might have otherwise missed: other times i've felt soundly robbed! But those occasions when a brief snatch of a song, a review, or even just the artwork has persuaded me to part with my hard earned cash and rewarded me tenfold are the ones where i thank my impulsiveness. One of those albums was Casanova by The Divine Comedy aka one Neil Hannon from Derry in Northern Ireland. He'd already released two albums of what is often called Chamber Pop - contemporary songs with ornate, orchestral instrumentation - to critical acclaim but little success, but Casanova, released in 1996, started to turn things around. Inspired by the life of the Venetian "gambler, eroticist and spy" it didn't initially set the charts alight, but after Chris Evans started championing the first single "Something For The Weekend", it became their first album to chart, albeit at a modest 48. The single, however, cracked the Top 20, and after hearing it i shelled out for the album. I'd never heard anything quite like it before: lush, elaborate and often epic songs full of wit and intelligence, with full orchestration that made most bands occasional use of strings look positively low key in comparison. The theme of the album was largely a preoccupation with sex and how to get it, but written in a wry and tongue-in-cheek way, with the gawky Hannon playing the urbane loverman/fop/dandy, right down to the sharp suits and cravats. There was a definite sixties influence throughout the album both in music and style, most evident in "Becoming More Like Alfie" which namechecks the eponymous character played by Michael Caine, Hannon deciding that emulating the cocksure womanising Alfie is perhaps the way to success with women, having failed with more romantic methods. Playing this character doesn't always yield the expected results though: the deceiving player of "Something For The Weekend" meets a sticky end in the woodshed his lover implores him to check on, having been played by her. Attempts at seduction litter "In And Out Of Paris And London", and the sex-as-battle metaphors of "Charge"; "A Woman Of The World" seems to be lusting after some unattainable society girl; "The Frog Princess" (another Top 20 hit) is a tale of regret at having got involved with a cold heartless woman for sex. The lighter moment of "Songs Of Love" is from the point of view of the songwriters stuck in bedsits writing about love but not experiencing it. The dark night of the soul of "Through A Long And Sleepless Night" finds the character riddled with self doubt and unhappiness, wondering if the bohemian life he has chosen will ultimately leave him ending his life alone. The Scott Walker influence is most obvious in the closing track "The Dogs And The Horses", a meditation on death and the only song on the album not about sex in some way. This album turned me on to the works of Scott Walker, Jaqcues Brel, and opened my eyes to music that was more than just blokes with guitars. Hannon ditched the ladies man image after this album, and has since made a rich and varied string of albums. But this is the one that catapulted him into the charts and the public eye.