The Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow is a setting that flatters almost any kind of music – perhaps not Swedish Death Metal or a similar ilk, but certainly the elegant Baroque pop stylings of The Divine Comedy. With its warm acoustics, impeccable sight lines, and refined atmosphere, it was an ideal home for Neil Hannon’s dry wit and gently theatrical songwriting.
The warm up act was Studio Electronique. Hailing from war of thew roses country the trio were never going to warm up the crowd with their slow paced melancholy. The injection of some funny one liners from lead man James Leesley did little to raise the tempo but did lighten the mood somewhat. Leesley, to his credit, is a lyricist of some note; like Morrisey without all the self importance… he even had a song about a seaside town!
There is no doubt that his self titled album would be a great listen on a wet, reflective Sunday morning but, sadly, it’s not conducive to a sold out Concert Hall.
The hall was fully seated and sold out tonight, befitting the sophistication of Hannon’s “Rainy Sunday Afternoon” tour – even if it had rolled into Glasgow on a rainy Monday. The audience was greeted by Elgar’s ‘Nimrod’; one of the finest pieces of instrumental music ever written… will it clash or compliment with one of the best lyricists of our time?
Through a haze of smoke and subdued lighting, Hannon and his band took the stage, launching into the delicate ‘Achilles’ – an opening that set the tone for an evening of understated lexicon a la The Divine Comedy.
Hannon, the sole constant in The Divine Comedy’s ever-shifting lineup, remains the band’s dapper, deadpan centre. Clad in a suit and jaunty hat, glass of red wine in hand, he cut a figure of effortless cool – the sort of man who could serve cocktails mid-set (which, indeed, he did) without breaking his languid stride.
The setlist leaned toward the literary and the lightly ironic. The lengthily titled ‘The Last Time I Saw the Old Man’ flowed into ‘When the Lights Go Out All Over Europe’, each receiving generous ovations. ‘Rainy Sunday Afternoon’, the tour’s eponymous track, arrived with little in the way of pomp as Hannon’s deadpan delivery and methodology was more than enough to keep the sold out venue in his trance.
If the pace occasionally felt measured, even one-note, it was by design. Hannon’s performances have never been about frenzy or excess. Instead, his baroque pop vignettes unfold with an urbane ease, his wordplay precise and his melodies immaculately constructed.
The lighting design, though simple, was evocative: shafts of illumination cutting through smoke to cast long shadows against the concert hall’s vast curtain. Those in the upper tiers, dead centre, had the best vantage point to appreciate the full visual composition.
By the close, The Divine Comedy had turned a dreich Monday in Raintown into something quietly transcendent. Hannon was, as ever, “too cool for school,” but just the right amount of cool for Glasgow.
Review and photographs by John Brown Photography
