Product Description

'Regeneration' is The Divine Comedy's first album for Parlophone Records and includes the single 'Love What You Do'. Itis a less poppier affair than 1998's 'Fin De Siecle', but shows a maturity in the songwriting of frontman Neil Hannon.

Track Listing

1. Timestretched
2. Bad Ambassador
3. Perfect Lovesong
4. Note To Self
5. Lost Property
6. Eye Of The Needle
7. Love What You Do
8. Dumb It Down
9. Mastermind
10. Regeneration
11. The Beauty Regime

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10814 in Music
• Released on: 2001-03-12
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
Divine Comedy singer and songwriter Neil Hannon has always been a frustratingly erratic talent. At his best, he is a writer and singer of ballads without peer among his contemporaries, capable of producing songs, such as "The Dogs & The Horses" or "Sunrise", of which Tom Waits might be proud. At his worst, he is an insufferably smug perpetrator of bumptious novelty hits, notably the fatuous sing-along "National Express". Watching Neil Hannon's career has been a little like witnessing the spirits of Scott Walker and Jonathan King fighting for control of the same mind. Regeneration hopefully marks the point at which Walker finally triumphs: there is, happily, not a single joke, punch line or zany sound effect to found. Hannon has taken his inspiration from his previous best effort, A Short Album About Love, but replaced the rueful gloominess of that fine record with a heartfelt and touching optimism: "Perfect Lovesong" and "Love What You Do" are guilelessly joyful, and even when anger manifests itself on "Dumb It Down" and "The Beauty Regime", there is a sense of the righteousness that comes of fighting the good fight. The tunes and arrangements are exquisite throughout: Hannon is right back on form. --Andrew Mueller

Customer Reviews

DEEP, DARK AND GLOOMY - NEIL HANNON GETS DEPRESSED
The Divine Comedy's first Parlaphone album is an interesting record. Largely absent is the orchestrated, tongue in cheek humour and quirky songs of the 90's - replaced by introspective lyrics, pared down arrangements and a heart of darkness. On it's initial release it must have alienated the bands loyal fanbase as much as their new record label - Cassanova it is not.
Neil Hannon had good intentions - he grew his hair long, got rid of the suits and show-tune leanings and attempted to try something new and interesting. It almost worked.
The good first - 'Bad Ambassador' is one of the finest singles the DC ever released. Lyrically, sonically and vocally it is what Oasis would sound like if they were a little less 'Slade' and more 'Beatles' circa Revolver. 'Perfect Lovesong' is a classic mix of poppy tune, smart lyrics and beat-group arrangement whilst in 'Mastermind' Hannon remembered to include a massive chorus amongst the soul searching and dark themes.
The main problem with the rest of Regeneration is pacing. It's all hugely melodic and beautifully produced but you do wish that, amongst the earnest lyrics and awkward chords, NH had thrown in a couple of sprightly pop songs to lift the tempo and lighten the mood just a little.
On later albums Absent Friends and Victory For The Comic Muse he got the balance just about right - but on Regeneration listening to the whole record in one sitting can be a bit of a slog.
Less Leonard Cohen and more Ray Davies next time please.

Look again in the mirror & see, exactly how perfect you are.
The new millennium was a curious time for those bands once at the forefront of the Britpop scene. Many imploded, some mutated and others continued with business as usual. The holy trinity of Pulp, Blur and Oasis showed their individuality by taking wildly different career paths - Blur lost a member, dabbled in world music and came back with an album that tried to sound like OK Computer, but instead, sounded like a sub-standard The Bends - Pulp made a darker album produced by Scott Walker dealing with murder, obsession and the asylum issue - whilst Oasis lumbered on as a tribute act to themselves. Meanwhile, Radiohead got weird with the ambient electronic experiments of Kid A and Amnesiac, alienating many who wanted the dull rock of 1995 that would later be reflected by Travis - Luke Haines (of The Auteurs) would form Black Box Recorder, score a top-twenty hit with a song about adolescence and produce obscure soundtracks for films about bedroom terrorists - whilst Neil Hannon (of the Divine Comedy) would push for a strange sound that managed to incorporate the traditional indie-pop guitar sound, with an edge somewhat closer to ambient or post-rock.

Written off at the time of release as The Divine Comedy attempting to ape Radiohead's classic OK Computer, Regeneration can now be appreciated as a much more interesting album that deals specifically with post-millennium turmoil, the shape of the world circa 2001, and the continual dumbing down of society into a tired tabloid pulp. The album is wildly different than anything Hannon had done before, with the sound of Regeneration rejecting the 'one man and his orchestra' template that had benefited albums like Casanova, A Short Album about Love and Fin de Siecle, and instead incorporating a full-band performance from collaborators Bryan Mills, Ivor Talbot, Stuart Bates, Miggy Barradas and long-term arranger/collaborator Joby Talbot, alongside Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich. The use of Godrich as producer means that the album sounds like every other album that he's been involved with since OK Computer, so there's definite shades of The Invisible Band, Sea Change and Talkie Walkie... However, if we sift beneath the electronic blips and bleeps and the swathes of atmospheric backing, we find some of Hannon's very best songs, which are here all the more affecting when stripped of the more familiar orchestral arrangements and that BIG theatrical sound.

Like Fin de Siecle before it, Regeneration is probably Hannon's most pessimistic work, with the songs here painting a picture of soulless streets, vacuous thoughts and characters devoid of morals and emotions. Many of the songs have an alienated feel to them, particularly a song like the opener, Timestretched, which finds Hannon introducing the album with the aching refrain "there's not enough hours in the day / to say all that I want to say...". The song acts as a short introduction that sets the template for the album as a whole and leads us smoothly into the forgotten single Bad Ambassador, which probably should be seen as a rock song in the mould of U2's career peak Achtung Baby, with a great vocal performance from Hannon (which almost comes close to "snarling"!!) and an epic guitar solo probably more at home on a classic Queen or Pink Floyd LP. The lyrics, as ever, are fantastic, with Hannon intoning what sounds like absolute nonsense ("I wanna chill / wanna sit real still / wanna sleep like the dead on a bed of roses...") before taking it to the bridge with the fascinating lyric; "I wanna abseil down my ivory tower / and buy myself a Jaguar!!".

Throughout the album, Hannon can be seen pushing his lyrical wit further than ever before, using metaphors and irony in songs like Perfect Lovesong (the only song here that recalls the classic Divine Comedy pop style and a track that was probably included under orders from EMI!!) and the heartfelt Lost Property (in which Hannon lists a number of discarded items before tying them all together with the chorus; "all through my life / there have been / many rare and precious things / I have tried / to call mine..."). The Eye of the Needle is bleaker stuff, building around an acoustic guitar and that Godrich style ambient backing... with Hannon singing vague lyrics that just evoke a sense of urgent sadness, with that standout lyric; "the cars in the churchyard / are shiny and German / distinctly at odds with / the theme of the sermon / and all through communion / I study the people / threading themselves through / the eye of the needle", somehow managing to encapsulate a century's worth of social and political horror (or something like that!!). Songs like Love What You Do and Dumb it Down continue the bleaker themes and the lulled sound of drifting guitar chords, lush keyboards, subtle percussion and a hint of piano, with Hannon's weary voice tying the whole thing together perfectly.

Despite what some critics have said, Regeneration is a great album... both musically and lyrically. The songs more than stand up to those on Liberation or Fin de Siecle, whilst the overall song-writing is here more impressive than on popular albums like Casanova and 2004's return to norm, Absent Friends. Yes, the production does scream Radiohead-lite... but look beyond this to the deft instrumentation, the evocative lyrics and the tremendous melodies and you have something approaching a minor-masterpiece. The closing run of songs include the gorgeous Mastermind (which builds around acoustic guitar, some minimal piano and Godrich's production effects, and finds Hannon crooning lines like "every nose is a vacuum cleaner / in the loved-up London arena / every eye flies a dollar sign for me... / every tongue will wag if you want it / every lung has a shadow on it / every heart comes apart at the seams" before gleefully intoning the slogan; "you don't need an indie song... to figure out what's going on") as well as the title track, and the gorgeous downer of a climax, The Beauty Regime ("and if your life depresses you / just live it through / your favourite movie star..."), which brings things to a close on a hopeful, though bitterly ironic, closing note.

Tonight Matthew, I’m going to be Radiohead!
I don’t have all of the Divine Comedy’s albums, but I love the 3 I heard before this one.

My first feeling on hearing this was disappointment. The album seems a lot more homogenous than other DC records. The songs are similarly paced, and mostly use the same instruments.

Slowly tho, it grew on me… this album is definitely a ‘grower’. I would now place is equal with any of the other DC albums.

The album begins with the understated ‘timestretched’, which sets the tone of warm melancholy for the rest of the album, with Neil Hannon comparing his life passing to the consumption of beer by a barfly… ‘bars get too busy, with people saying ‘is he…
That guy, oh, what’s his name…?’

‘bad ambassador’ and ‘perfect lovesong’ come next, almost to throw one off the scent. These are more like traditional DC songs, the latter having the big, sweet sound of something off ‘pet sounds’.

After that, the album sounds to me like a more acoustic ‘ok computer’. Tho it’s certainly no slavish copy; Neil Hannon clearly has enough musical ‘strings to his bow’ (no matter what he claims in ‘timestretched’) to give any song his own stamp, whoever who the initial influence may be. For instance, ‘mastermind’ borrows some of the riff from ‘karma police’, but Hannon marries the unsettling tune with positive lyrics and an anthemic chorus that might well make Thom Yorke shudder…

Neil Hannon has clearly wanted a change of direction on this album, and he drafts in Nigel Goodrich, the producer of ‘ok computer’ to help him achieve it. Thus there are nice little electronic touches, like the sliding brass synthesiser sound on ‘eye of the needle’ that sounds to me like a very tuneful vacuum cleaner…

Incidentally, this would have to be my favourite track; Neil Hannon’s lyrics being at once sincere and witty, and a beautiful uncluttered tune.

This album doesn’t have any of the big orchestral productions that characterised ‘fin…’ or the novelty songs that Hannon occasionaly throws into the mix, but in my opinion, it is certainly not the weaker for it. In fact, I think the album displays a real maturity in his songwriting, and the songs stand up without the need for a ‘wall of sound’ production.

I have read other reviews here with interest. One reviewer states “‘Regeneration’ is simply their finest!” well, I agree, it is- but then so is ‘Casanova’, ‘Fin de Siecle’ and ‘Liberation’ the other three CD’s of their’s I have heard. It’s like trying to choose the best Beethoven symphony- they’re all flippin’ brilliant! …in their own way.