"I'm working my way to having a library in my house - really dark wood, nice faux leather chairs. I think it’s so important," says Neil Hannon of The Divine Comedy.
"I want to read a lot of books in there but I also want a place to write lyrics. You never quite know where you’re meant to be when you’re writing them."
It would be easy to picture Hannon, who is now 54, in a book-lined room in the Kildare house he shares with his wife, animal rights campaigner Cathy Davey, puffing meditatively on his pipe (yes, he has started smoking a pipe) and dashing off another witty ditty or two.
"I want to attain peak Hannon," he says with a giggle.
The library will have to wait because right now the owner of the best titter in music has returned with his 13th album, Rainy Sunday Afternoon.
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It is peak Hannon - another engaging set of ornate pop, with songs ranging from vignettes about domestic bliss, to grief, to magical childhood memories, and to dark ruminations on war and social upheaval. It’s all carried off with his usual orchestral dash and a knowing wink, like a conclave between Burt Bacharach, Noël Coward and Scott Walker.
Hannon is as dapper as ever in a pinstripe black jacket and crisp black shirt when we meet. Sitting in a room in the RTÉ Radio Centre, he's eating chocolate and signing a very large stack of shiny cardboard prints for the new album. Each one is dispatched with a flourish of a silver marker.
Rainy Sunday Afternoon (and no, it's not a reference to The Small Faces) is his first LP since 2019’s Office Politics but it’s not as if he hasn’t been busy. He got to fulfil all his Anthony Newley/Lionel Bart dreams when he wrote the songs for the Timothée Chalamet movie Wonka and he also penned the score for ingenious Irish sci-fi indie movie Lola.
His new album was recorded in Abbey Road’s Studio 3 and this is the part of the interview where Hannon is meant to eulogise about how he detected the ghosts of John, Paul, the two Georges and Ringo as he toiled in the hallowed halls. The fact that English composer Elgar lived in the house before it became a studio and his fellow composer Thomas Beecham helped set the place up made Hannon feel right at home.
"Syd Barrett gave me a lovely back rub as I was sitting at the mixing desk," he titters. "I’m not going to start saying there’s a vibe in Abbey Road but there’s a vibe in Abbey Road. Hahahahaha. It’s just really cool in there. You always see someone famous in the canteen, which is nice!
"We did most of Wonka there and it just sounded so great and I thought I just want to make one album in here before I die."
Rainy Sunday Afternoon has some very personal songs, especially The Last Time I Saw The Old Man, a drowsy and nocturnal slice of jazz about his late father Brian, who was Bishop of Clogher from 1986 to 2001.
He passed away in 2022 aged 85 after a long battle with Alzheimer’s. On the song, the usually dandyish Hannon Jr drops the drollery and recounts in plain verse how he watched his dad’s slow decline. It is unbelievably poignant and honest.
"I just didn’t know of any other way of doing the situation justice," he says. "I just went at it and decided no wisdom, no profound statements . . . just like what it was because it’s not like a tribute to my father. It’s a description of what this does to people and how futile and what a waste it is. I think there’s anger in that song, weirdly, at the injustice of it all."
Was he very proud of you? "Oh god, yeah. He would often tell me," Hannon smiles. "There was no unfinished business or anything like that. Both my parents were both proud as punch. I owe them a lot; they never stopped me or tried to point me in a different direction."
The album also has moments of restrained, bemused anger.
"I’m not a very angry person but it’s virtually impossible not to be angry considering what’s going on in the world," Hannon says.
"As America slides disgracefully into a police state and suddenly people can make racist comments without much pushback and the whole time we’re sleepwalking to climate disaster . . . it’s not really a rosy picture."
He playfully skewers Donald Trump on Mar a Largo by the Sea, a rinky dink number that piles on the crass lack of class. "I made it all sound as sickening as possible, as nauseating as the man himself," Hannon says with a grimace.
There are other very personal songs too. On All The Pretty Lights, he recalls being mesmerised by the kaleidoscopic neon streets during a childhood trip to London with his parents and while his wife doesn’t appear on the new album, his 23-year-old daughter, Willow, from his first marriage, pops up on the final track Invisible Thread.
"Invisible Thread is a song about fatherhood - suddenly, the kids are off doing their own thing and you’re left thinking 'so, what am I for again?’ There’s a void, it’s weird. I wasn’t with her mother since Willow was seven so there was none of that sort of thing but there was a feeling of I’ve nothing left to teach her, if I ever did."
Willow is currently attracting attention with her own band, indie duo Burglar.
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"Her band are kickass indie rock 'n’ roll and I’m proud of her," says her dad. "I really dig it and it’s the kind of music I wish I could have made when I was her age. And thank god she’s not doing something boring. Hahahaha."
The chocolate has all been scoffed and there are still a lot of those prints to be signed so I venture the awkward question as my parting shot - How sad is he that the Father Ted musical is very unlikely to be staged or is he able to move on?
"Oh, I’m very able to move on and so is Arthur [Matthews] and Paul [Woodful]," Hannon says. "It’s very oh, that’s that then’. I can’t really say anything else about it because it’s dangerous territory but don’t worry, if there were any good tunes in the musical they’ve already been recycled! Hahaha."
There’s that titter again.
Rainy Sunday Afternoons is out now
The Divine Comedy play the Waterfront Hall, Belfast on 27 March, 2026 and the National Concert Hall, Dublin on 28 and 29 March, 2026.
