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22 Music Week 12.07.13 INTERVIEW NEIL HANNON AND THOMAS WALSH THEY’RE CREASING UP


Where’s all the humour gone from pop? The Divine Comedy frontman Neil Hannon and his Duckworth Lewis Method cohort Thomas Walsh talk laughter, record companies and cricket


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TALENT  BY TIM INGHAM


N


eil Hannon has been the lead singer of intelli-pop band The Divine Comedy for 24 years, but right now he’s got more


sporting matters on his mind. In 2009, together with fellow Irishman Thomas


Walsh of indie outfit Pugwash, Hannon formed The Duckworth Lewis Method, a band whose songs and lyrics are solely dedicated to the art of cricket - and all of the wonderful punning opportunities offered by the nuances of the game. Yet to dismiss TDLM (itself a play on a cricket


calculation metric) as a mere ‘novelty’ band would be an error. The serious musicianship of Hannon and Walsh can’t be called into question, as evidenced by the band’s self-titled first LP, which was nominated for an Ivor Novello Award for Best Album in 2010. (The gong went to Paulo Nutini for Sunny Side Up. The Scotsman also pipped Dizzee Rascal on a pleasingly diverse shortlist.) Now, just in time for the Ashes 2013,


Duckworth Lewis are back with new album Sticky Wickets. Songs such as Boom Boom Afredi, Line


ABOVE


Off the bat: Walsh and Hannon were nominated for an Ivor Novello in 2010 as The Duckworth Lewis Method


and Length and Nudging and Nurdling contain more cricketing in-jokes than a tipsy post-match village pavilion - and more gently smutty innuendo than you could jiggle a wicket at.


“All the fun seems to have gone from pop music - it’s all ultra-serious now, even the stuff aimed at young people. There’s gold in them there tears” THOMAS WALSH, DUCKWORTH LEWIS


Like the band’s debut, it has been issued on


Hannon’s own Divine Comedy Records label, which he launched in 2010 to release his band’s Bang Goes The Knighthood LP. A host of famous types offer a few spoken lines


on Sticky Wickets, including long-term TDLM fan - and cricket nut - Stephen Fry, as well as Carl Barat (Libertines), Neil Finn (Crowded House), Joe Elliot (Def Leppard), Tim Wheeler (Ash) and Dermot O’Leary. There are also a couple of music industry types knocking about on the record too, such as writer David Hepworth and PR supremo Barbara Charone.


Music Week sat down with Hannon and


Walsh to discuss their move into sports-related musicality, their music industry experiences and their concern over a severe lack of humour in modern day pop songs…


Were you surprised at the level of acclaim and attention the last record attracted? NH:We had a hunch that it was so insane people might be interested. Whether they’ll be interested again with more insanity this time, we’ll see.


TW: There were moments when it changed for us. Stephen Fry tweeting about it was a big moment. And then there was BBC Breakfast television, when Neil was called Dave Hammond. I’ve still got that one on my Sky Plus.


How was it being nominated for an Ivor? NH:We were chuffed. Simon Le Bon read out the wrong name. That nomination recognised that it wasn’t just a novelty record. We make good music - the cricket thing is almost secondary.


TW: Paulo Nutini, more power to him, spoke in the


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