Neil Hannon
opens his 12th
Divine Comedy
effort with the bustling "Queuejumper," a wry takedown of serial line cutters ("Red lights don't apply to me") that feels like an ancillary story in the "National Express" universe.
Office Politics
' titular cut sets the tone for what follows, leaning hard into satire and dialing back on the chamber pop of recent outings in favor of a more electronics-forward approach. While
Hannon
's bourgeois rapping can be a tad divisive, he remains a compelling raconteur, spinning yarns both lurid and lovely, like a Dickensian mash-up of
Gilbert O'Sullivan
,
Oscar Wilde
, and
Luke Haines
-- this is a man who co-fronts a group (
the Duckworth Lewis Method
) devoted entirely to the sport of cricket. There are plenty of classic
-esque characters to be found here. The long-married "Norman and Norma," looking for any kind of romantic spark, find their libidos stoked after attending a reenactment of a battle between the Normans and the Saxons in the seaside tourist town of Clacton, while the succinctly named "Philip and Steve's Furniture Removal Company" details an imagined sitcom (including the theme song) about
Philip Glass
and
Steve Reich
's early days in New York, with an appropriate amount of minimalist looping. Elsewhere, the tech-shaming "Infernal Machines" flirts with muscular,
Goldfrapp
-y electro-pop, the rain-soaked "A Stranger Here" evokes
Brel
-era
Scott Walker
, and the resounding, "Bolero"-esque closer "When the Working Day Is Done" harkens back to winningly indulgent greats like "Sunrise" and "Our Mutual Friend." Both confounding and compelling,
, like much of
's work, feels a bit like a magnificently rendered lark, but as per usual, it's hard not to admire the craftsmanship. ~ James Christopher Monger