The Divine Comedy Live Music & Concerts

Don't miss The Divine Comedy live at The De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill with support from Lisa O'Neill

With their eagerly anticipated eleventh album ‘Foreverland’ due for release September 2nd, The Divine Comedy have announced 18 UK & Irish dates (alongside a full European tour) this October and early in 2017.

Since The Divine Comedy’s inception in 1989, Neil Hannon has time and again proved to be one of the UK’s best and most original songwriters. New album 'Foreverland' exemplifies this, with references to everything from Catherine The Great to the French Foreign Legion. Neil says of the new record, 'it's about meeting your soul mate and living happily ever after... and then what comes after happily ever after. Get ready for the most historically inaccurate hit of the summer'.

While not releasing a record since 2010's 'Bang Goes The Knighthood', Neil Hannon has certainly kept himself busy. He co-wrote a second album for acclaimed cricket-themed project, The Duckworth Lewis Method, composed a choral work for the Royal Festival Hall's newly renovated organ entitled 'To Our Fathers In Distress', and oversaw the transfer of his musical, Swallows And Amazons, to the West End stage.

For more information go to www.thedivinecomedy.com

SUPPORT ACT: Lisa O’Neill

Pothole in the Sky- Biography by Leagues O’Toole

On her way to heaven, Lisa O’Neill hit “a pothole in the sky.” And so it begins, a perfect way to start this tale, this journey, this album. Because all great things and all great art usually stem from a bump in the road - or a pothole in the sky. This is Lisa O’Neill’s third album, following a witty and charming debut ‘Has An Album’, and the follow-up ‘Same Cloth or Not’ that marked her as a serious artist, a contender, a voice, a forked tongue. And now ‘Pothole in the Sky’ - the artistic leap that had to be taken. And Oh boy has she taken it. These are wonderful, unique full of the sort of glorious individual word-play that could only come from the pen of O’Neill.

“My viewing point is from the planet earth and my perspective is influenced by my environment and emotional experiences. My perceptions are as individual, debatable, ever-changing and as unimportant as anyone's.” admits O’Neill. “The more I learn the more I'm moved. My life is tiny in the greater scale of things. If a star blinked, it would miss me.”

Lisa O’Neill has a remarkable voice; a Cavan twang, a growl, a song-call. It can be many things. She needed to make an album about that voice. ‘Pothole in the Sky’ is a recording of “the voice”. The Voice is everything for the folk singer – a conduit for the words, the emotion, the thought process. And if, like me, you ever felt a record needed to be made of an artist’s voice, about her voice, so beautifully focused on, centred on, honed-in, on and in love with the voice, then this, is the record.

O’Neill’s voice goes to all sorts of places throughout the course of this album, and the music provided by Emma Smith, Seamus Fogarty, Joseph Doyle, and Mossy Nolan follows her like a dark swirling storm, often bringing to mind the loose impressionism of the Dirty Three. On ‘Planets’ O’Neill delivers her most extraordinary vocal and lyrical performance to date. It is remarkable and on this form she could go toe to toe with Nick Cave at his most fire and brimstone. Except O’Neill’s prose is elemental and mysterious, not angry.

As any truly great singer knows, it’s not all about those big reaching numbers. There is some truly brave singing on this record. For instance, the odd high-pitched flourishes on ‘Nasty’, or the shrill parlour style singing on ‘Black Sheep’. The latter features some of the best accompaniment too, a mellifluous psychedelic montage that literally sets sail one-minute-thirty in as Lisa goes off on one of her patented hypnotic stream-of-conscious word-play trips. The album closes out on a succession of brilliant songs. ‘The Banjo Spell’ is a tender ode to the aural folk tradition without being throwback. In fact it has a big lush modern feel to it. And ‘The Hunt’, featuring guest fiddle and banjo from Colm Mac Con Iomaire and Glen Hansard respectively, is just another meandering epic Lisa O’Neill number, twisting and turning and changing its phrasing and tempo to suit the story and accommodate the words. She makes it sound easy. But it’s not.

‘Career high on magnificent 3rd album…..for those that commit to the experience there’s a terrible beauty hovering inside these almost unbearably honest songs’. Hotpress - 9/10 review - May 2016

‘On Pothole In The Sky, Lisa fearlessly explores the avenues of her mind, and with her songwriting gift, she lights candles in the darkest corner.’ Irish Daily Mirror - 4/5 - James Ward, April 2016

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