Will Neil Hannon get it up the charts?
Back in the 1970's, there was a band called 10cc. They made extremely slick and well crafted pop music which featured lyrics and story telling that proved the band, whilst intelligent, were extremely smug and made every attempt to inform others of their cleverness.
They had some okay tunes but on the whole, the smugness and cleverness became bigger than the songs.
If you now swap the decades and 10cc for Neil Hannon then that's a pretty fair summing up of The Divine Comedy. Now back to some sort of full strength line-up, the bands glory days are far behind them but in an effort to not have to sack any more band members, it appears that Hannon is intent on recreating the sounds and songs that first made him so popular.
'To Die A Virgin' opens with some 1960s kitchen sink-like drama samples much in the way that 'Becoming More Like Alfie' and the lyrics then proceed to tell a cheeky tale of a young man who may just be about to break his duck...as it were.
Musically, its charming enough, the string sections picks out some fine lines and the backing "sha la la las" fit in well, pushing the track on.
If it wasn't judged against the classic Divine Comedy output, the track may be alright but placed in context it's an extremely watered down version and in trying to bring in a bit of titillation and cheekiness, it just seems a bit off.
The trumpets certainly have the horn though and like most first times, the track ends rather abruptly, so in these instances, its clear a lot of thought has went into the song.
If you loved the original Divine Comedy hits and you feel the charts are missing that quirky mix of intelligence and refined humour then go out and get this. If that's too refined, crack open a beer and make sure to watch Modern Toss on the telly.