Divine Comedy- The music

Link: http://www.thedivinecomedy.com/index.php this is the musician's website, though he is also on iTunes and has a Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Divine-Comedy/288798654027)  Here is another link to the song I referenced on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgsuAUuMxFw

        While browsing my iTunes library I had the idea to search "Divine Comedy" and see what would come up- if there where songs composed about Dante's work- and I came across this musician who calls himself the Divine Comedy. His actual name is Neil Hannon. Hannon is a British song writer who appears to have his own record label, also entitled Divine Comedy. I was wondering what this seemingly random British guy had to do with the Divine Comedy, so I listened to a few of his songs and looked at his lyrics.
        One song that stands out to me in particular is entitled "Down In The Street Below". The lyrics invoke images and allusions to Dante's Inferno. "Climb the darkened stairwell" and "to slip beneath the shadows of the bedroom blinds" both made me think of the theme of light in Dante's Inferno and like the Inferno this scene in Hannon's song is depicted as dark and getting darker as it continues. When he sings "beneath the shadows" it made me think of Dante's term "shades" to describe the souls of the dead, and to go beneath them is like the image of Dante traveling through hell. He also has a line in the same song "you just don't know whether you're doing it for the right reasons" which obviously brings up the questions of morals and implies that he may not be using good morals to make decisions, and perhaps he is sinning like those in the Inferno. I like that Hannon is using a different form of poetry, music, which can reflect themes in the Divine Comedy. I also think it makes a difference having the music attached to his thoughtful lyrics. I don't think he focuses only on the Divine Comedy, but as all song-writers do, he uses a lot of his personal experience, but it seems that most of his songs reflect some part of the Comedy.
       This song is pretty soft and starts out slow, although parts of it become faster. The rhythm of the song matches the pace of Dante's descent into hell, starting out slowly in the first two cantos, speeding up through the first five circles of hell, and then slowing down again as he gets further into hell/the song. His voice also reflects this descent in that his voice starts out high pitched, and then when he speeds up his voice lowers an octave- literally getting deeper, again like Dante going down into hell.
       While personally I'm not a huge fan of how the music sounds put together, I do think it is really interesting that Hannon, regardless of whether or not he chose to, focuses his songs around the works of Dante and make all these connections through a different form of art. Perhaps it is because the Divine Comedy truly has a timeless message about human nature to the point where most of life's experiences can apply to it. Since he is a modern artist, his songs also bring a contemporary connection through his lyrics and sound style, which I also think is pretty cool. A last thing that I noticed and got a kick out of is that his fan page is called "the inner circle" (can be found through his webpage).