May, 2019
"Unlikely victory for the comic muse"
The Divine Comedy - Office Politics 8/10
Unlikely victory for the comic muse.
Thirty years in, Neil Hannon seems like he still can't decide whether he would rather be Scott Walker or Richard Stilgoe.
On the face of it, Office Politics, his 12th LP, feels like a victory for the Stilgoe tendency; a bathos-heavy double album of character sketches and ballads about sexual frustration and PowerPoint. But somehow it works: "Norman And Norma" rhymes Cromer with pneumonia, but unfurls into a touching piece of, if not yacht rock, then pedalo pop, while "Philip And Steve's Furniture Removal Company" builds from sitcom premise into a funny, peculiar, epic piece of pop minimalism that could be no-one else but Hannon.
Stephen Troussé
Uncut Magazine, June 2019
