For once the location fits the subject. The Library Bar of the Central Hotel is all hushed mutterings and plush bookshelves and velvety drapes and soft candlelight. It could be gentrified Dublin a century ago, with Yeats and AE and assorted Hellfire Clubbers lurking in shadowy corners resurrecting The Dead. It hardly needs to be stated that Neil Hannon looks quite at home here, loosening his tie and sipping a drink at the end of a day’s promo chores for the sixth full-length Divine Comedy album, the rather splendid Absent Friends.

Absent Friends is out now on EMI