Neil Hannon from THE DIVINE COMEDY still has some melodies in stock that work

Neil Hannon von THE DIVINE COMEDY hat noch immer Melodien auf Lager, die auf und abseits der Bühne funktionieren

Neil Hannon and The Divine Comedy are always good for surprises. Hannon is a music lover who constantly sucks all kinds of sound directions. The new album "Office Politics" is a treasure chest of bizarre ideas and irresistible melodies. Hannon neither wants to be limited nor underchallenge his listeners. After 30 years of band history and a dozen albums, he still wants to entertain himself and his listeners at the highest level - and sometimes annoy them a little bit.

eclipsed: Your album almost sounds like a musical. It's very colorful, has catchy melodies, and you also provide context, scenery and environments for each song.

Neil Hannon: That would certainly be a strange musical. As someone who writes music for the stage, I have to say that the album would have been completely different if I had written it for a stage production. But it's true, the album is funny, varied and quite long. I like it.

eclipsed: How do you remember so many great melodies after all these years?

Hannon: Even as a child I always hummed melodies to myself. I remember sitting on the back seat of our family's car. When ABBA were on the radio, I would hum along, but as soon as the song was over, I would invent my own melodies. My brother asked me, "What are you humming about? I said I don't know. I guess I've always had the ability to come up with melodies. But apart from that, it's a huge field of trial and error. It's not just about inventing a melody, you have to make it blossom. That's not easy, and when you finally have enough experience and know how to do it, you break all the rules, reshuffle the cards and start all over again. Otherwise it would be boring.

eclipsed: "Office Politics" sounds like an excellent commentary on our time.

Hannon: This is a deliberate coincidence. I started working on the synthesizer instead of piano or guitar because I had never done anything like this before. Although it didn't become a synthpop album at all, the synthesizer had an important influence on the content I wrote about. The texts tended automatically towards the machine. I don't have a good relationship with technology. She doesn't like me, and I don't like her. Whatever I get my hands on breaks. But I began to think about how much our lives today are dominated by machines. This frightens me and affected the lyrics. I always write about what's bothering me.

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