The Divine Comedy - Promenade (LP)

Promenade is where Neil Hannon’s grand, bookish pop world truly snaps into focus. Released in 1994 on Setanta Records, it feels like a film in album form, a daylong stroll through sea air, libraries, cinemas and restaurants, with two lovers as our quiet guides. Liberation the year before had hinted at this ambition, but Promenade is the one that breathes in salt and literature at the same time. It is chamber pop with a twinkle in its eye and sand in its shoes.

What hits first is how orchestral the record feels without ever turning stodgy. The writing leans on strings, woodwinds and piano, yet the songs move with a playful lightness. Don’t Look Down climbs patiently, then opens out into a sky full of organ and strings. It is bold but not blustery, and the melody carries the weight. A Seafood Song could have been a novelty tune in lesser hands. Instead, the arrangement is crisp and full of colour, matching a lyric that savours details of the plate and the coast. Hannon knows exactly when to wink and when to hold a moment still.

Then there’s The Booklovers, a spoken and sung roll call of authors and poets that somehow works as a pop track. It is funny and affectionate, and it tells you plenty about the project at hand. Promenade is literate, sure, but it never forgets the hook or the human scale. When the Lights Go Out All Over Europe threads in a love of French cinema and city nights, yet the chorus feels made for parks and buses, not lecture halls. The Summerhouse is the album’s sunniest memory. It balances nostalgia with a clear-eyed melody and lands like a postcard you forgot you kept.

The sequencing is quietly brilliant. Short vignettes sit beside big set pieces, which keeps the ear fresh. Neptune’s Daughter drifts like a tide between more narrative tracks. Geronimo darts about with nervous energy. A Drinking Song starts off with pub mischief then tips into a full choral sway that feels exactly like last orders. It is theatrical, but the theatre is your local, not a velvet-curtained palace. Through it all, Hannon sings with an open, unaffected tone that sells both the jokes and the fragile lines about love and time.

Promenade closes with Tonight We Fly, a song that has become a fan favourite and a regular live closer. It lifts off in stages, adding harmony and pulse until you feel the floor drop away. There is no cheaper thrill in this band’s catalogue, and no richer one either. It is the kind of ending that sends you back to the start to catch the light and shadow again.

Across the years, critics have kept returning to this record. AllMusic praised its balance of wit and melody, and reappraisals around the band’s remastered reissues in 2020 treated Promenade as a touchstone for literate pop. It sits comfortably beside its neighbours Liberation and Casanova, but it has its own weather system. Where Casanova turns the charm up to eleven, Promenade keeps its collar turned up against a sea breeze and lets the romance come to you.

If you collect The Divine Comedy vinyl, this one is essential. The 2020 remaster gave Promenade a tidy lift in clarity, and the pressings did justice to those woodwinds and choral blooms. You can find Promenade vinyl bundled with other The Divine Comedy albums on vinyl, or pick it up as a standalone if you prefer to savour the set on its own terms. If you like to browse in person, a good Melbourne record store will often file it near classic British chamber pop, though stock can disappear fast. Online shops make it simple to buy The Divine Comedy records online, and it turns up frequently among vinyl records Australia listings.

Put it on late afternoon, when the light is soft. Let the tide come in, one story at a time. Promenade isn’t just clever. It is generous, tuneful and quietly moving, the rare album that makes you feel smarter and kinder for spending time with it.