I rewatched the show recently, and while I did laugh plenty, I also winced a great deal, amazed that so much offensive detail didn’t irk me at all when I was younger. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.

Walker might be gone, but the ways in which Hannon emulates him, captures his nuance and style, is like having someone putting out B-sides to Scott 1-4 across their own career. It was released in 1996 by Setanta Records, and it happened to be the band's commercial breakthrough. When the bass gets slinky and busy during passages on “Charge” and “A Woman of the World” there are echoes of Climate of Hunter to be heard.Casanova had the longest recording period of any Divine Comedy album up to that point and consequently had a higher budget. But one thing that has thankfully been unwavering through the decades is my love of the music from the show. In 2014, NME included the album in its list of "30 Glorious Britpop Albums That Deserve a Reissue Pronto," saying "Gawky Neil Hannon as smooth loverman was a conceit that actually worked and it produced two of Britpop's least obvious classics in the hilarious Cold Comfort Farm-inspired tale of 'Something for the Weekend' and the movie fantasy of 'Becoming More Like Alfie'. And it always sounds fantastic, because, besides the brash orchestra in the background (and sometimes at the forefront), Hannon can really sing.

The song was later covered by Ben Folds on his EP Sunny 16 in 2003 and Peter Bjorn and John as part of Under the Radar's Covers of Covers album in 2022. Also a scratch right at the beginning of the side to dead wax that creates a nasty pop for the first five or six seconds. I listen and content myself knowing that someone out there is still carrying the mantle of Walker’s style. Two other singles released from the album, "Becoming More Like Alfie" and "The Frog Princess", charted at No. Two of Casanova 's songs were originally composed by Hannon as potential theme tunes for the 1995 sitcom Father Ted: Hannon's first attempt was rejected, and he reworked it to become "A Woman of the World"; his second attempt was accepted and used as the theme for the series, but was later reworked as "Songs of Love", eschewing the original version's guitar for harpsichord.The Walker style is arguably at its most obvious on Casanova – which makes it all the more enjoyable for me to listen to. I may be ready to leave Father Ted behind in the vault of nostalgia in my mind, but Casanova I will keep coming back to – and not just for “Songs of Love”.

Jeremy Lee of ABC News considered that this record brought Neil Hannon "closer to the orchestral pop sound he'd been dreaming of. He was accompanied in that 1995 recording by a specially assembled group of young musicians, under the baton of Dr. I bought this because I heard the track 'Songs of Love' (based on the theme tune of Father Ted) on a radio programme and loved it.After spending quality time with the album, all 11 tracks here become songs of love to love, even if they are all actually about sex (or maybe especially because of that fact). The rubber brass, marimba, and wide-spanning orchestration on “Middle-Class Heroes” makes it feel like it could fit onto Scott 2 all too perfectly. The LP release consists of the original remastered album, cut at Abbey Road, packaged with a download code for the album and bonus tracks. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice.

Perhaps Hannon is poking fun at himself and the love-song-writing community, but he still takes his advice to heart – something that helps distinguish him from other artists. The CD release consists of 2 discs: the original remastered album, with a second CD of B-sides, demos and alternate versions lovingly curated by Neil Hannon, much of which has never been heard before. The album has been remastered from the original tapes at the legendary Abbey Road Studios by mastering engineer Frank Arkwright (Blur, The Smiths. Casanova is Hannon at his best, showing his range, his talent, and his inventive mind as he takes in the world around him. By far the tightest of the band's earlier works it paved the way for not only more ambitious music from Neil Hannon over the course of the next few years but also left a permanent mark on the Brit-Pop genre, making The Divine Comedy a must have to many an indie lover.

And ultimately that’s why Casanova is such a rewarding album for me: nostalgia, for both my younger self watching Father Ted, and my present self remembering the musical oeuvre of Scott Walker. I promptly went out and bought Scott 1 – 4, and over the following years I consumed about everything I could in the Scott Walker universe. Performing as an eleven-piece ensemble, the band will play two albums from their catalogue in full each night. Even almost 25 years after its release it still thrills, beguiles, and dazzles – for both listeners new and old. With the vast majority of it's runtime made up of songs themed around the act of fornication, it was Divine Comedy's first toe dipped into the blossoming Brit-Pop genre adding to it's style by way of Hannon's sharp suits and odd appearance.