Plenty of bands and artists have tried to perfect chamber pop into an ideal mixture classical ideas, instrumentation, and compositions with modern sensibilities and textures. Some end up landing mostly in the pop category with a few strings and horns sprinkled in, other veer far into the experimental and lose any pop appeal entirely. But Neil Hannon, leader and only consistent member of the Divine Comedy, apparently hit the ideal balance sometime in the late ‘90s and just keeps running with it. But Foreverland doesn’t sound like the result of an artist that’s been at it for over two decades. It’s still fresh and impressively in tune with the rest of the musical landscape.
The Musea label and the Finnish magazine Colossus endlessly continue their quest for the greatest universal themes, in order to complete their collection of concept-albums dedicated to Progressive rock. The hero of the day is Dante Alighieri, the famous medieval author from Firenze who wrote "The Divine Comedy". That's precisely this epic piece of work, without a doubt one of the greatest books of all times, that serves as the basis for this project. And of course, it has been divided in three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso.
These Colossus projects are always a great way of getting to know dozens of prog acts all over the world and to hear how they are inspired by the literary source material and how they obey the producer's wish to sound like 70's prog. Italy is however much more represented than any other country, and it's understandable that often the same artists reappear on several projects. "Paradiso" could well be among the finest ones…