How does the album differ from the Divine Comedy?
50% of it has been written by Thomas Walsh of Pugwash, and he’s different from me in many, many ways. He’s a brilliant writer. It was great fun to sit down and do something that had no pressure at all. Nobody knew we were doing it, nobody cared. We would get together every couple of weeks and just do it. Because there was nobody waiting for it there was nothing to hold us back. We flew through it and there it is. It’s a pop record, it has some big big tunes on it. The longer you go on in this business, the more you’re trying to reach some artistic goal and the less time you have for the sillier fun stuff. On this record I got to do a lot of the silly stuff I’d been storing up for several years. Have you read Joseph O’Neill’s novel Netherland? Its lyricism has won high praise and it too draws inspiration from cricket. I haven’t, actually, although somebody else mentioned it to me. I did an interview for Q magazine and the guy obviously had his whole thing written before we spoke. He sai
