‘Never underestimate the determination of a quiet man’. In the case of Iain Duncan Smith the phrase sounded oddly pathetic, but whispered alongside the charming and distinguished Ed Harcourt – its resonance could scarcely be sweeter. Ed Harcourt returned this month with new single ‘This One’s For You’. Tender, bruised and effortlessly melodic, ‘This One’s For You’ like much of the new album, ‘Strangers’ is a veritable hourglass of whimsical melancholy and slurring, inebriated vigour. With shades of everyone from Jeff Buckley, Thom Yorke, Badly Drawn Boy and Starsailor it’s sure to see a few hearts melt and a few voices soar.
It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, though. A practically cats-eyes approach to production steers this wily but inoffensive little roller coaster straight down the middle of the road. Songs like ‘The Storm Is Coming’ somehow just seem too neat, too perfectly angled, perhaps even too consummately performed to yield the gorgeous imperfection that courts your average unruly genius. And for all it’s heaving bosoms, swelling pomp, and driving rain, Harcourt’s storm is a storm in a tea-cup. You get the feeling he’s getting all hot and bothered about nothing, that the only real torture endured by this artist beyond the 2-litre bottle of White Lightning he might consume of an evening, is finding the local library closed just as he’s needing a quote from Salinger or Shakespeare to round off a lively couplet. As a multi-instrumentalist it may just be that there’s just no tension coming through in the recordings. Everything proceeds in that same smooth direction, following to exactitude the faultless geometry of an idea. It’s a slight that could be levelled at Mull Historical Society and on ‘Born In the 70s’ you could use the two in the same breath again: it’s breezy, it’s melodic and it’s sure to see a few slippers tapping over at Radio 2 – but it lacks an edge. Too smart by half, some might say. Me included
Proving beyond a shadow of a doubt, however, that when there’s more fo and less fi on the recordings, Harcourt can equal if not surpass his beloved Buckley, ‘Something To Live For’s bare-knuckle simplicity and joyful slobbishness is tenderly inspired. The same could be said for the skeletal approach to songs like ‘The Music Box’ and ‘Open Book’ whose muted pianos and disoriented kick-drumming amplifies a tension and a sense of misery often alluded to, but rarely realised on the album. ‘Black Dress’ even recalls the loose, frisky arrangements of one Badly Drawn Boy and the more badly drawn Harcourt illustrates his tales of emotional exploration, the more sincere he seems. On this occasion, less is definitely more, and bar the ill-advised inclusion of ‘Loneliness’ – a veritable Pye equation of writing-by-numbers if ever there was one – ‘Strangers’ is as captivating as they come and a worthy, if uneven follow-up to 2001’s ludicrously well received ‘Here Be Monsters’ Lp.
Recorded at The Aerosol Grey Machine Studio in Sweden ‘Strangers’ is produced by Jari Haapalainen who has recently produced The Concretes.