It’s obvious very early on in Absent Friends that there is something special here. ‘Charmed Life’, the opener, is a perfect love song. Over a lolloping bass line and piano like gentle rain on a roof, Neil Hannon sings to his baby daughter: “When I hold you in my arms/And look back on my charmed life, my charmed life/I hope, I hope if nothing more/That one day you’ll call your life/A charmed life”.
Already we have a couple of keys to the album, and the suspicion that Absent Friends is the regeneration that Regeneration wasn’t. The themes that permeate all eleven songs begin here—the nurturing love of family, the preciousness of simple moments and the great good luck it is to be alive.
Crucially, the hope in Absent Friends is in contrast to the wonderful Promenade’s romanticism, based largely on naiveté and French films. You can’t get more intimate than this; nor can you more succinctly express the sum of the hopes of every person for each of their loved ones.
Not everything is so up front or autobiographical. ‘The Happy Goth’ —“her face is whiter than the snows of Hoth” —is sung in character. By painting a pen picture in the compassionate voice of the title character’s mother, Neil miniaturises and deftly manages big issues: alienation, the generation gap, the unbreakable bond of blood. There is also a tuba, which never hurts.
Similar narrative techniques are applied in the stunning, stately ‘Freedom Road’ and the playful but ultimately elegiac ‘My Imaginary Friend’: “One day we’re gonna play hide and seek/And Ben’ll be up the creek/Never to be seen again/He’ll disappear the day that childhood ends/I’ll never forget you, my imaginary friend”. The effect is not to distance you but draw you in.
‘Our Mutual Friend’ I can’t breathe a word about or it’ll be ruined, but I can reveal that it broke my frickin heart on the sunny spring morning I first heard it. The title track, then, is the death song that tradition demands of the end of a Divine Comedy album—or, more correctly, the entreaty to live life to the brim disguised as death song: We don’t have much time! Oscar Wilde, Steve McQueen and of course Laika the canine cosmonaut make cameos, as Wild West violins race each other to the finish line and a gong gets whacked to signal the grand finale. ‘Absent Friends’, meanwhile, is one of several tracks here that Nina Simone could have sung.
If you’re like me, then The Divine Comedy 1993-96 was aural El Dorado, the last couple of albums were disappointing, and Absent Friends is the one you’ve been waiting for; the one you were worried Neil Hannon might never make.
It may be even better than that golden age. It is full of love and the stuff of this life, the best we’ve ever had.