Cloudspeakers

Novelty records are always fun to listen along to and maybe crack a smile. They are enjoyable for a while then they get a little tedious and usually end up being played by those tragic wedding DJ's... Read more

In the past it's been said, "creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvellous". That eye-opening statement by a well known American commentator has probably never been so applicable upon t... Read more

It’s not every record that gets described by the artist as “possibly the least necessary album of recent years”, but then it’s not every day you come across a concept album about cricket. Even less... Read more

Here’s an unlikely phrase: ‘indie cricket concept album’. But The DivineComedy’s Neil Hannon has indeed teamed up with Thomas Walsh, an Irishdemi-pop star from the ‘90s band Pugwash, in a... Read more

As a man who has little to no interest in Cricket whatsoever, it is strange how I now find myself with the unenviable task of reviewing a cricketing concept album. However, when the two perpetrator... Read more

It is now, certifiably, summer in England – and what is more both summery and English than cricket? There can almost surely be nothing. Wimbledon, perhaps, but that's now over. The sound of leath... Read more

Resulting from a brainstorming session over pints of Guinness, recorded in just six hours in Dublin and mixed at Abbey Road Studios, near Lord's – or HQ as these two obsessives no doubt refer to ... Read more

Neil Hannon and Thomas Walsh’s paean devoted entirely to cricket is the aural equivalent of Pimm’s on a hot summer’s day. While the drollery is exquisite (the Coward-ish ditty Jiggery Pokery imagin... Read more

Named after the fiendishly contrived means of determining winners in limited-over games shortened by rain and bad light, The Duckworth Lewis Method is a concept album about cricket created by the D... Read more

A concept album about cricket from Neil Hannon of the Divine Comedy has the potential to be so arch as to be unlistenable. Credit, then, to Hannon and his partner on this project, Thomas Walsh, for... Read more