The Divine Comedy
Barbican, London
★★★★☆

“HALLO, Birkenhead!” Neil Hannon welcomes the Barbican Hall in typically tongue-in-cheek fashion. The Divine Comedy frontman, sharp-suited with a black trilby, and band have just taken to the stage to the tune of Elgar’s Nimrod from Enigma Variations.

The band are touring off the back of Rainy Sunday Afternoon, their first album in six years and arguably their best since 2004’s Absent Friends, which marks a newfound maturity.

Dialling down the frivolity in favour of more reflective themes of mortality, heartache and “the state of the world,” Hannon’s in top Scott Walker croon. He launches into two of the most downbeat tracks from the new album — the melancholic Achilles, inspired by a 1915 war poem by Patrick Shaw-Stewart, and The Last Time I Saw the Old Man, about his father’s final year with Alzheimer’s.

But don’t be fooled into thinking that these set the tone for the evening, as he soon had the entire hall join in a singalong of Happy Birthday to his mum.

The two-hour set soon transformed into a tour de force of the band’s impressive back catalogue of orchestral chamber pop from the 1994 classic album Promenade onwards. When The Lights Go Out All Over Europe, Generation Sex, Something For The Weekend, Becoming More Like Alfie, Norman and Norma (a nod to Neil Innes’s Kenny and Liza perhaps?) and Lost Property all get an airing.

Hannon even has a dapper Doppelganger on hand who arrived with a drinks trolley for the loungey number Mar-a-Lago By The Sea, which acted as something of an interlude while the singer dished out orders to himself and his bandmates.

At one point he’s suddenly down in the crowd taking selfies during Our Mutual Friend, before returning to channel Johnny Cash on The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter — one of the new album’s highlights.

Hannon’s poetic songwriting ability and his Beatles-like flair for a catchy pop tune has been a constant over a career spanning more than 35 years and 13 albums.

Some may hope for a time when The Divine Comedy will perform again with a full orchestra, but accordion player Ian Watson, violinist Lucy Wilkins, pianist Andrew Skeet, and double bassist Simon Little are enough to do justice to some of the more intricate arrangements.

An encore featuring Pursuit Of Happiness, Invisible Thread and a clap-along Tonight We Fly  rounds off a vintage performance.

The Divine Comedy are touring the UK until October 25. For more information see: thedivinecomedy.com