a short site about The Divine Comedy

French version

Divine Comedy Records Ltd.

In the early 2000’s, Neil Hannon created his own label, Divine Comedy Records Ltd, which was officially launched in early 2005.

The label owned all rights of the Divine Comedy’s back catalogue from Setanta (1990 to 1999), and hopes to reissue all these albums.

Besides, since the end of his contract with Parlophone, Neil Hannon has decided to be his own producer and use this label for the new Divine Comedy albums as well as other projects such as The Duckworth Lewis Method. The distribution is actually ensured by PIAS which owns former Setanta distributor, Vital.

Here is a list of all the physical products that were issued by Divine Comedy Records.

The Divine Comedy

The Duckworth Lewis Method

Footnote: Setanta Records and Divine Comedy Records catalogue numbers

During its activity period the label Setanta used various numbering schemes for its releases. The two main schemes both started with the prefix SET. The first historical range focusing on EPs had the numbering scheme SETnn or SETnnCD; while 7” releases had ranges with other prefixes. With the arrival of CDs and multi-format release, a main range was set up with the numbering scheme SETxxnn with xx being the format (LP, CD, etc.). Finally to stop confusion, after number 15 the former scheme would be stopped, and the SETnn convention would be used in the main range for 7” releases.

Regarding The Divine Comedy, the early 7” belong to some various ranges, the two early 12” EPs to the first range, and finally all albums and singles belong to the main range. Therefore, do not confuse SET011CD which is Europop with SETCD011 which is Liberation.

After Divine Comedy Records acquired the The Divine Comedy’s back catalogue from Setanta, their first release was a reissue of A Secret History… which coincidentally had catalogue number SETCD100. It was decided then, to make the job easier for distributors, that their naming scheme would be DCRLnnxx keeping the same release number. Therefore all new Divine Comedy releases on DCR would be above 100, and the back-catalogue would keep the same old numbers.

However, with the addition of the Parlophone albums to the re-release, the numbers 70, 80, 90 have been arbitrary chosen for them. Unfortunately 70 was also the release number of The Pop Singer’s Fear Of The Pollen Count and collides with Regeneration.

Alongside the DC release, another numbering was set up for The Duckworth Lewis Method with prefix DLM. To add more confusion, when The Divine Comedy came back with Foreverland, they counted the number of DLM releases (6) instead of (new) TDC releases (3), continuing at 107 instead of 104. And finally, no idea why number 115 was not used.

Here is a summary of the catalogue numbers for both labels on the main TDC/DLM releases.

Release nameSetanta cat numberDCR cat number
12” range
Timewatch SET 008
Europop SET 011
7&rdquo range
Jerusalem CAO 002
Lucy CAO 008
Your Daddy’s Car CAO 009
Indulgence range
Indulgence No.1 DC 001
Indulgence No.2 DC 002
Main Divine Comedy releases
Fanfare For The Comic Muse SET CDM 002
Liberation SET CD 011 DCRL 011
Promenade SET CD 013 DCRL 013
Casanova SET CD 025 DCRL 025
Something For The Weekend SET CD 026
Becoming More Like Alfie SET CD 027
The Frog Princess SET CD 032
A Short Album About Love SET CD 036 DCRL 036
Everybody Knows (Except You) SET CDx 038
Generation Sex SET 050
Fin De Siècle SET CD 057 DCRL 057
The Certainty Of Chance SET CDx 067
National Express SET CDx 069
Regeneration DCRL 070
The Pop Singer’s Fear Of The Pollen Count SET CDx 070
Gin Soaked Boy SET CDx 071
Absent Friends DCRL 080
Victory For The Comic Muse DCRL 090
A Secret History SET CD 100 DCRL 100 CD
Bang Goes The Knighthood DCRL 101
At The Indie Disco DCRL 102
I Like DCRL 103
The Duckworth Lewis Method
The Age Of Revolution DLM 001
The Duckworth Lewis Method DLM 002
Meeting Mr Miandad DLM 003
Sticky Wickets DLM 004
It’s Just Not Cricket DLM 005
Third Man DLM 006
Modern-day Divine Comedy
Foreverland DCRL 107
Catherine The Great DCRL 108
How Can You Leave Me On My Own DCRL 109
To The Rescue DCRL 110
Loose Canon DCRL 111
Office Politics DCRL 112
Queuejumper DCRL 113
Norman And Norma DCRL 114
Infernal Machines / You'll Never Work In This Town Again DCRL 116
Venus, Cupid, Folly & Time DCRL 117 RCDBX