"I wanna get you off... well, ain't that enough?"

So sexy electronica woke up a few months ago and decided, hell, let's just _be_ the Eighties. The likelihood of any coherent political or cultural statement rising from the miasma seems increasingly unlikely. Even scandal's getting tiresome. And now... Grungey Neil Hannon. No wonder apathy rules.

This isn't an especially bad song. In fact, it's hard to resist the moment when Mr. Hannon there launches himself into the chorus with typical recklessness, eliciting the usual image of his very small frame trembling in the effort to contain his very large voice. That knowing edge has gone almost entirely; from the stream of drawled platitudes with which the newly laconic DC are trying to - oh, wait - get us off, get us high, it can just about be deciphered that this should be some kind of newly disinhibited life-affirming yell. Unfortunately, with the leap into the muddied waters of recognised hedonism (emancipation by combat trouser?) comes predictability rather than liberation. The sudden appearance of superfluous drugs references (and they are superfluous - the Neil Hannon we know and love is already a master of convoluted narrative and the sublimely ridiculous) confirms only one thing: this is the Divine Comedy on dope. Someone get them an espresso, please.