Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Neil Hannon’s The Divine Comedy is probably the closest group ensemble to recreate the sensational beauty and drama of the old style Victorian Music Hall, and yet as the sheer poetry and observations are unveiled before the audience, the sense of modernity is overwhelming, two worlds colliding, one of examination of the sometimes absurd world we live in, and the other of outstanding theatre that captures human frailty at its most keenest, most endearing, its most vulnerable.

A first night of any tour can be seen as a work in progress, the edges maybe a little rough, the audience unsure of how to react, and when joined by the arrival of a brand new album, in this case Rainy Sunday Afternoon, the crowd, a packed out celebration of all walks of life inside the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, simply sat back in respectful understanding and allowed, indeed demanded, the sound to wash and cleanse their musical palettes with attention and focus.

Playful, feeding off melancholy, shining a light on what others may consider the incidental and the un-proposed delight of crafting songs of the ordinary and the sincerely cool, this is the power of Neil Hannon and his carefully selected team of performers, actors of the stage, observers on the deck of the good ship entertainment, possess and own with authority and a sly smile that beckons the listener with intent and groove.

Neil Hannon may not strike the average attendee as a kind of grand master; a flamboyant showman armed with the kind of sex appeal that once had people falling faint in the aisles as outrageous sounds concocted spells of devotion and mass hysteria, but he is a sorcerer, a magician who’s weapons are words and images that leave a crowd spellbound and reflective, and as track such as Generation Sex, The Last Time I Saw The Old Man, Leaving Today, At The Indie Disco, Neapolitan Girl, Don’t Mention The War, the expressive, cheeky, vaudeville like Bang Goes The Knighthood, Norman And Norma, Something For The Weekend, Mar-a- Largo By The Sea, The Man Who Turned Into A Chair, and the pertinent Infernal Machines all left their indelible mark on the evening, that sense of showmanship was not to be confused with the outlandish or the show off routine of some, but rather the curiously remarkable, the sway of the mind, the ritual of the uncommonly cool.

An evening of the familiar and the new combining to give bounce and pleasure to a crowd entranced by the divine. 

Ian D. Hall