Music / Colston Hall
Review: The Divine Comedy, Colston Hall
“Shake your epaulettes,” Neil Hannon shouts from the Colston Hall stage. The lead singer of The Divine Comedy is currently dressed as Napoleon Bonaparte to give added authenticity to Napoleon Complex from 2016 album Foreverland.
“Why aren’t you shaking your epaulettes?” he asks the crowd who after a rather lugubrious start to this sit-down show are now dancing like the scene imagined in At the Indie Disco.
Hannon’s band even play a prolonged snippet of Blue Monday by New Order in the middle of Indie Disco just to really ensure that the recently sedentary crowd are dancing.
Once the crowd are on their feet, Hannon and his band – all dressed in shirt and ties – seem much more at ease.
This is a group that has been together for almost three decades, although the cerebral Hannon is clearly the star of the show.
Midway through the evening, he takes a bottle of red wine from out of an old school desk and pours it for his band – them in plastic tumblers and he in a glass flute.
Neil Hannon had time for a lie-down during his set
What at first looked like beer cans next to each band member were in fact electric candles, that when turned on didn’t quite have the same effect of turning things up to 11.
Hannon’s great skill as a songwriter is to tell stories, exemplified in songs tonight such as Becoming More Like Alfie about a young man with NHS specs and Catherine The Great about the eighteenth century empress.
His stories quite often also involve his travails with the opposite sex. A much-needed dose of energy tonight comes with Neapolitan Girl, and continues during Our Mutual Friend where as he sings about getting a lift back to a friend’s house he walks down the centre aisle and ends up sat next to a fan in the front row of the tiered section of seats.
On his way back to the stage he even has time for a lie-down flat on his stomach in the aisle, before sneaking off stage right and reappearing as Napoleon.
The evening finishes with an exuberant National Express before an encore which starts with Songs of Love and finishes with Tonight We Fly, the epaulettes on Hannon’s shoulders still shaking vigorously.
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