Album review: The Divine Comedy, Promenade
Apr. 4th, 2009 07:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juliet(One of my 101 things is to listen to & review some old albums.)
This is one of my favourite albums in the world ever. I remember buying it, aged 16, in Bromley just after Easter with £7 of Easter money burning a hole in my pocket. I'd just read a review in the NME which only gave it 7/10 but which made it sound fascinating[0], and the tape was right there in HMV for £6.99, so... I seem to remember spending the rest of the afternoon, once I got home, listening to it over & over again.
It's very vaguely a day-in-the-life concept album. 'Bath' is probably my least favourite, although it does start with the lines:
which I still find myself quoting at opportune and inopportune moments.
'Going Downhill Fast' is awesome, and another one that I sing to myself regularly: specifically, when cycling downhill fast. 'Vacuous vice'! 'The starting is easy compared to the stop/And the bottom is hard when compared to the top!' Also it has lovely la la la bits at the end.
'The Booklovers': not so much a song as a list of authors, with responses from those authors (in silly voices) inbetween times. (I remember an intention to read all of the mentioned authors; I still haven't, although I've read most of them now.) Also another of the quotes that has sunk its way into my brain (a variation on Dryden imitating Horace; the Dryden version comes up later on):
This is one of my favourite albums in the world ever. I remember buying it, aged 16, in Bromley just after Easter with £7 of Easter money burning a hole in my pocket. I'd just read a review in the NME which only gave it 7/10 but which made it sound fascinating[0], and the tape was right there in HMV for £6.99, so... I seem to remember spending the rest of the afternoon, once I got home, listening to it over & over again.
It's very vaguely a day-in-the-life concept album. 'Bath' is probably my least favourite, although it does start with the lines:
Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all its sons away.
They die, forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day.
which I still find myself quoting at opportune and inopportune moments.
'Going Downhill Fast' is awesome, and another one that I sing to myself regularly: specifically, when cycling downhill fast. 'Vacuous vice'! 'The starting is easy compared to the stop/And the bottom is hard when compared to the top!' Also it has lovely la la la bits at the end.
'The Booklovers': not so much a song as a list of authors, with responses from those authors (in silly voices) inbetween times. (I remember an intention to read all of the mentioned authors; I still haven't, although I've read most of them now.) Also another of the quotes that has sunk its way into my brain (a variation on Dryden imitating Horace; the Dryden version comes up later on):
Happy the man, and happy he alone,
Who in all honesty can call today his own.
He who has life, and strength enough to say,
'Yesterday's dead and gone; I want to live today.'
(I should also note that it starts with a nod to consciousness as a mere accessory of physiological processes, which as anyone who has discussed such things with me will know is roughly my own position on the matter.)
'A Seafood Song' I can take or leave (poor fishies!); 'Geronimo' I like the piano bits (very rain-ish!). I've always had a very clear image of them running out of the rain and into the house.
'Don't Look Down' probably has to make it onto any 'top 10 songs ever' list I would construct, except that I can never construct such things. I love the soaring floating-by-the-clouds bits, but what I really love is the final two verses, specifically the bit where the narrator explains to God why he thinks he, God, shouldn't exist. It's no longer a fully accurate representation of my feelings on the matter, & it certainly isn't the *why* of my atheism, but: it absolutely hits part of why I'm *glad* I don't believe in any deity. And at 16, after spending the previous two years slowly extracting myself from my religious beliefs, it hit a damn sight harder than that. I wrote those two verses on more than one of the exam desks at school, while patiently waiting to be allowed to leave (my school didn't believe in letting you out before the end EVEN IF YOU HAD FINISHED THE EXAM ALREADY. TWICE. MY GOD HOW TEDIOUS MATHS GCSE WAS.). Along with that one about the moons by Blur.
'When The Lights Go Out All Over Europe': I love the quotes from movies in this. Also the soaring bit in the chorus. And the bit where all the plots get twisted into each other.
'The Summerhouse': oh, this is just lovely. "Daring escapes at midnight and costumeless bathes at dawn". That feeling of endless summers, the way they are when you're a kid. I get weepy at this song for no reason I remotely comprehend... I think maybe it's the clarinet.
'Neptune's Daughter': sweet enough, but doesn't stand out, possibly because everything else around it does.
'A Drinking Song': aw man, so much awesome. Although the live version I have (B side to 'Everybody Knows (Except You)') is even more awesome. This is one of the traditional Songs Thatfernasto And I Play When Drunk And Playing Each Other Songs. Usually at the stage of the evening where we've finished off the beer and moved onto the vodka/whisky/whatever else is lying around, & I've started pinching rollies.
ALL MY LOVERS WILL BE PINK, AND ELEPHANTINE!
/me finds the wine
'Ten Seconds To Midnight' and 'Tonight We Fly' really go together, and between them qualify as another of my top 10 songs ever list[1]. I love the weaving of the countdown into the lyrics of 'Ten Seconds'. And then the snare drum accelerating into 'Tonight We Fly'. Which is just: joyous. Over the hills, and far away... over the friends that we've known, and those who we now know, and those who we've yet to meet. (Another thing that's part of my brain-furniture now: I love the reminder that this is just the *middle* of things. Albeit a long middle.)And when we die, oh, will we be that disappointed or sad?
If heaven doesn't exist, what will we have missed?
This life is the best you've ever had
It finishes with the regular version of the Dryden.
I love this album *so very much*; and I've loved it for 15 years now. Nearly half my life. I -- should probably be more alarmed by that.
/me hits play again, for the fourth time this evening.
[0] I actually had that review on my wall for ages, as part of the extensive quantity of cut out bits of NME, Select, posters, etc etc I covered all visible patches of wallpaper with.
[1] The acute amongst you will be suspecting that the fact that I already have two songs from the same album on this hypothetical list may be why I can't actually construct one for real.
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no subject
Date: 2009-04-04 08:54 am (UTC)I think I like "Geronimo" a bit more than you - it's such a lovely snapshot of life. Like an old memory they'll have every time they smell coffee and rain together.
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Date: 2009-04-04 09:14 am (UTC)...WhatEVER are you doing?
Date: 2009-04-04 11:54 pm (UTC)Re: ...WhatEVER are you doing?
Date: 2009-04-05 12:43 pm (UTC)