*** The Divine Comedy

A SECRET HISTORY: THE BEST OF THE DIVINE COMEDY

(Setanta/Red Ink)

The Divine Comedy is the stage upon which Neil Hannon has molded himself into the kind of pop star that one would have been more apt to run into in the early '60s than the late '90s. His oeuvre celebrates that odd moment in pop history when music-hall crooning attempted to coexist peacefully with rock and roll -- so predictably, his compositions are thick with pounding piano, brassy horns, and symphonic strings that provide an opulent setting for his theatrical tenor, spilling a libretto that switches from sugary sweet one minute to viciously wry the next. A Secret History brings together the rash of hit singles the Irish Hannon's had as the Divine Comedy in the UK over the past decade -- from the breezy absurdity of tracks like "The Pop Singer's Fear of the Pollen Count" to the searing social commentary of "Generation Sex" complete with contrived talk-show sound bites and lines like "Generation Sex/elects/the types/of guys/you wouldn't leave your kids with/then shouts `off with their heads' if they get laid." That none of these tracks have made so much as a dent in the US market is hardly a surprise. Though there're gobs of Bacharach in the orchestrated pop of "Becoming More like Alfie," Hannon's Noël Cowardly fop-rock aesthetic is the kind of stuff we Yanks left behind when we separated from the Mother Country -- as much of a foolish idea as that may have been.

-- Erin Amar