The Divine Comedy
Barbican, London

“MAYBE it’s tonight. Maybe tomorrow night, next week, next month, next year / We’ve only time to fear”

So sings Neil Hannon, art-pop titan and leader of The Divine Comedy, 29 years after the release of Liberation, the band’s first album (their first album proper, 1990’s Fanfare for the Comic Muse, has long since been stricken from the official record).

The passage of time hangs heavy over this retrospective. Not that you’d know it looking at Hannon, a still cherubic, bird-like 51-year-old. Over the course of a week at The Barbican, and aided by an orchestra and some very fine musicians, Neil sings every single song off every single album of his band’s long and fruitful career.

Understandably, he looks nervous, though he makes time to thank us for our patience. This gig has been delayed twice, due to Covid, and some of us in the audience at the Barbican have been waiting for this moment since early 2020. We are, to quote another song from his oeuvre, “timestretched.”

Tonight we are treated to Liberation and Promenade, which contains some of Hannon’s most enduring and heartfelt songs. The Divine Comedy are often thought of as a band that writes silly songs — perhaps because of the name, or perhaps because of National Express, their biggest hit, a throwaway ditty about the joys of coach travel.

Whatever the reason, this is an unfair mantle. There is some extraordinary songwriting here, blessed with the arrogance of youth and a certain self-aware pretension that has dated a lot better than the work of many of his contemporaries. On occasion — like for Europop, a daft Eurovision banger, or Seafood Song, which does what it says on the (sardine) tin, Hannon seems slightly embarrassed about what he is about to launch into.

He doesn’t need to be.

Hannon was always an odd fish, an uneasy ally of the Loaded magazine Britpop years. On Liberation we find chamber pop bangers about an F Scott Fitzgerald short story (Bernice Bobs her Hair), paens to long-lost loves (Queen of the South), and the occasional all-time-classic (Your Daddy’s Car), with a chorus that holds up alongside any he has written.

But it’s Promenade, the second album of the night, where his genius truly reveals itself. A concept album about a single day in the life — Hannon gets a laugh when he admits the narrative is rather convoluted — we see his character have a bath, go on a bike ride, fall in love, get pretty nostalgic, and go on a balloon ride.

That final song, the rousing Tonight We Fly, brings the audience to its feet. But it’s the quieter, less aired numbers that linger. Ten Seconds To Midnight, overshadowed on the album by the galloping arrival of the closer, is allowed to breathe properly here, to a rapt, silent auditorium.

It’s another song about time, about who we are, and how we choose to spend our time. And judging by these untarnishable songs, Hannon has spent his very well indeed.

The Divine Comedy’s residence at the Barbican ends Sunday September 4 2022. Box office: 020 7870 2500, tickets.barbican.org.uk