"Yes, I think most people wish they had come to take me away," laughs Hannon. "I didn't really notice it, because nobody told me. Someone should have just taken me aside and said, this is f**king nuts. It's funny, because I only listened to it for the first time in about a year and a half, when we had just finished our new record. And I almost couldn't do it, it was so bizarre.
Having become so ironic that the irony was getting lost, Hannon decided it was time to "cut out that post-modern shit". Truth was, by the time he had released the hit single, The Pop Star's Fear Of The Pollen Count, Hannon was feeling a bit like a cartoon character. It didn't help that the video for the song called for the band to whizz through the air on turbo-charged spacehoppers. Did Hannon feel like he was becoming a caricature of himself?
"I feel great, but you've never made it until the album has come out and done what it's gonna do. And then you think, that's not enough, let's go and make another one. So you've never really made it. I don't know what would have to happen for us to sit down and say, yeah, we've made it, but it hasn't happened yet. But I just feel f**king cool, 'cos I've got a nice wife, nice house, nice dog, nice computer, and a nice band who get on really great together. What more do you want?"
They say marriage changes a man, and Neil Hannon is certainly looking a lot different these days. Gone is the skinny suit of yore, the schoolboy haircut and the Noel Coward demeanour: the Neil Hannon who slouches before me in a Dublin hotel is dressed in casual grunge chic, the jeans, tshirt, lank hair and sneakers suggesting an upper-crust Kurt Cobain. There's little resemblance to the buttoned-down young maestro who masterminded such ironic indie operettas as The Frog Princess, Becoming More Like Alfie and Something For The Weekend.
It would seem Hannon has grown weary of playing the pretentious fop, and has decided it's time to get real. That's what love can do for a man.
Marriage has not only changed Hannon's look, it's also changed his lifestyle. Since the leader of The Divine Comedy married his Dublin girlfriend, Orla, he's shunned the high-flying lifestyle which he used to embrace with more than his share of gusto, and traded in London's Met Bar for a quiet life in the capital's leafy Muswell Hill.
"Where we are, there's parks everywhere, so I'm just endlessly taking the dog for a walk," says Hannon in his soft, somewhat plummy brogue. "That's all I seem to do these days! I'm just a professional dogwalker. My wife still goes to the Met Bar, though. In fact, the last time she had a couple of her cousins over from Dublin, she brought them to the Met Bar, and George Clooney was there and they almost had complete kittens over it. They were going over to the bar just to rub up against him."
Derry-born Hannon has not only turned his back on the ligs and after-show parties - he's also relinquished at least some control over his musical baby. The Divine Comedy, which he set up 12 years ago, has come a very long way since its botched REM-influenced beginnings. The band's new album, Regeneration, is a different kettle of fish from its predecessor - the brash, blustery Fin De Siecle - and songs such as Love What You Do and Bad Ambassador are almost humble in comparison with the self-confident strut of Gen- eration Sex and Thrillseeker. It looks as if Hannon has - along with the suit - shed the pomp and overblown theatrics which have marked his music to date.
"Well, I think the key to how it sounds is that I'm not particularly trying to do anything much, and that changed the whole approach really," says Hannon. "It's very much a band record. And you know, I just wrote the songs on acoustic guitar, and the band came along and took it from there, and then we got Nigel Godrich to produce it and he took it somewhere else completely, and I was just hanging around doing a bit of singing. It was so different from the past - I feel personally liberated from the extreme stress and neuroses of the past albums, and I think this is definitely the way forward for the band."
When searching for clues to Hannon's state of mind during the making of 1999's Fin De Siecle, it's best to ignore the jolly lyrics and jaunty melodies, and head straight for the tortured web of arrangements and orchestrations. Look beneath the Wagnerian sweep of Sweden or the tooled-up avant-garde of Eric The Gardener, and it's easy to see the maelstrom of confusion and turmoil which must have churned inside their besuited creator.
I suggest Fin De Siecle was a fanfare for the paranoid popstar, and that Hannon had become like a tin-pot musical dictator, conducting the ceremony with military precision. Sure wasn't National Express nothing more than an updated version of They're Coming To Take Me Away Ha Ha? His bandmate, guitarist Bryan Mills, nods in agreement. "Yes, I think most people wish they had come to take me away," laughs Hannon. "I didn't really notice it, because nobody told me. Someone should have just taken me aside and said, this is f**king nuts. It's funny, because I only listened to it for the first time in about a year and a half, when we had just finished our new record. And I almost couldn't do it, it was so bizarre.
"It's like just one new thing pushing after the next one to get your attention, and it's just desperately, desperately trying to be the only record in existence. I was a bit of a control freak, but only because I had such full, widescreen ideas. And I don't think anybody really minded that much at the time."
Hannon's musical vision may have been grandiose and disturbingly singleminded, but the record-buying public didn't seem to mind. Both Generation Sex and National Express became big hits, so somebody out there must have liked what they were hearing.
"Yeah, but I think that was probably more because they were unspeakably catchy. I think I've realised that that's not the right angle to come to music at. I mean, there are an awful lot of catchy songs in the world, but it doesn't mean they're particularly good. Often we'd be in the studio just pushing the hit factor, but I'm now at the complete opposite point in my head. I've changed my mind . . . I'd always thought, well, that Aqua single, Barbie Girl, it's so well done. It's so perfect. But then I just turned around one day and realised it's all poo."
HAVING become so ironic that the irony was getting lost, Hannon decided it was time to "cut out that post-modern shit". Truth was, by the time he had released the hit single, The Pop Star's Fear Of The Pollen Count, Hannon was feeling a bit like a cartoon character. It didn't help that the video for the song called for the band to whizz through the air on turbo-charged spacehoppers. Did Hannon feel like he was becoming a caricature of himself? "I didn't feel it - I knew it. It was quite obvious that every time anybody wrote about us or talked about us, it was something to do with cravats. And it was getting very annoying. So it was important to burn the suits, and we haven't really replaced them with anything as such, 'cos Regeneration is more about being honest and being ourselves, and so," - he gestures towards the expanse of denim upon him - "this is kind of just what I wear generally."
Hannon is quick to quash any suggestion the grunge look is in any way contrived. This is simply Neil Hannon without feathers. Or cravats. He's not quite naked for all the world to see, but he's definitely slipped into something more comfortable.
"The moment I knew it was time to change was when we made Pop Singer's Fear Of The Pollen Count and Gin-Soaked Boy, because I realised after a few weeks that I didn't like either of them . . . And the worst thing was having to go and promote them for another six months, when you really weren't happy with them."
In 1999, 10 years after the birth of The Divine Comedy, the group signed to Parlophone Records, but before they departed from the Setanta Label, they released A Secret History - The Best Of The Divine Comedy, which neatly put the cap on the band's career to date. Luckily, says Hannon, Parlophone weren't expecting him to go on Top Of The Pops in a cravat, crooning catchy tunes and being terribly, terribly clever, don't you know. Nor did the label bosses bat an eyelid when the band requested producer Nigel Godrich to work on the new album. Godrich had produced Radiohead's Kid A, and the label must have feared The Divine Comedy were about to follow Yorke & Co down the ambient-electronica avenue.
They needn't have worried; while Regeneration doesn't provide the safety net of instantly catchy singles, it does offer enough depth to make for rewarding, repeated listening. Note To Self plunges into the bottomless pool of self-doubt and comes up shouting; Dumb It Down concentrates its vitriol on society's diminishing attention span; and Eye Of The Needle is a gently agnostic observation from Hannon's childhood, when he used to attend church in Enniskillen with his dad, the Bishop of Clogher.
"Well he's heard it and he hasn't killed me yet!" says Hannon, sounding a little relieved. "He always appreciates the honesty, and I appreciate his open-mindedness, because I think he likes the fact that I actually think about it at all. "Eye Of The Needle is more about wishing I did have faith, because it would make things a bit easier. And struggling with that, and all this sort of blatant hypocrisy of a lot of people who do go to church. We used to sing anthems like Billy McBride during communion, just to annoy my dad. I remember choir practice was hell because it totally clashed with Top Of The Pops. And we used to be trying to shoehorn my dad out of the church so he could drive us home in time for the last 15 minutes of the programme."
As a teenager in Derry and Enniskillen in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Hannon immersed himself in the pop music of the day, becoming particularly obsessed with one Nik Kershaw. "I think it's 'cos he used an awful lot of notes, and I liked that. He was really a complete muso, playing in a fusion band, and then suddenly, overnight, he changed into this popstar."
At 30, Hannon is finally learning to enjoy his own pop stardom, and he's also learning to let go a little and let others dictate things for a change.
"I feel great, but you've never made it until the album has come out and done what it's gonna do. And then you think, that's not enough, let's go and make another one. So you've never really made it. I don't know what would have to happen for us to sit down and say, yeah, we've made it, but it hasn't happened yet. But I just feel f**king cool, 'cos I've got a nice wife, nice house, nice dog, nice computer, and a nice band who get on really great together. What more do you want?"
Divine Comedy's new album, Regeneration, is released on March 9th. They play at the Heineken Green Energy Festival on May 5th at Dublin Castle.