Ed Harcourt, Wilton's Music Hall | reviews, news & interviews
Ed Harcourt, Wilton's Music Hall
Ed Harcourt, Wilton's Music Hall
The singer-songwriter is back with his first album in four years
Saturday, 19 June 2010
If the audience at Wilton's charmingly archaic music hall were feeling depressed by the bleak comedy of the England "performance" against Algeria, a whirl around the musical block in the company of Ed Harcourt was the perfect antidote. Critics feel compelled to categorise everything, and Harcourt has been compared to all and sundry, from Brian Wilson to Harry Nilsson to Tom Waits. But the great thing about Ed is that, despite being the 74 billionth singer-songwriter to walk the face of the earth, he manages to be a one-off, apparently sweet and soothing one minute, sending out pulsating waves of gothic gloom the next.
His new album, Lustre, is his first for four years, and has been scooping up rave reviews on account of its powerful songwriting and impeccable production. However, Harcourt live is a different proposition. The songs step out from their background and take on three-dimensional flesh, whether it's from the way Harcourt bawls the lyrics to the harsh stomp of "Heart of a Wolf" through a huge 1940s microphone, or how a couple of the three-piece Langley Sisters add pungent violin parts to the nostalgic yearnings of "Killed by the Morning Sun".
Sometimes Harcourt's songs can be simply exquisite, especially "Church of No Religion", where he floats his atheist message across a serene rolling beat amid a chord progression which, ironically, might have been divinely inspired. In "Fears of a Father", he squeezes a cradle-to-grave panorama booby-trapped with exploding clusters of metaphors into a five-minute waltz, as the Langley girls let it rip with the harmony vocals.
Were you to judge from the artfully lit photos on the sleeve of Lustre, you'd take Harcourt to be a sober, buttoned-up kind of guy, but put him on a stage and Mr Hyde soon starts to emerge. Ed enjoys a bit of a stomp, like the punk pastiche of "Born in the Seventies", where the band gallop along in a cloud of steam as Ed acerbically reassesses the last 33 years. In "Lachrymosity" (not a word you often hear in pop songs nowadays) Harcourt pounds the piano as if he's clattering out saloon-bar standards to an audience of drunken cowboys firing their Colt 45s into the ceiling, bellowing the lyrics as if this performance might be his last. (Harcourt onstage at Wilton's, pictured below)
There's no mistaking the heart of darkness wrapped inside a lot of this material. "When the Lost Don't Want to be Found" oozes metaphysical angst in a rather Leonard Cohen-ish fashion, as Ed's wracked voice and piano are counterpointed by stark electric guitar. Particularly sinister is "The Trapdoor", a horror movie in sound dripping with skulls and subterranean terror. You can't help noticing how the Langleys, in their matching white frocks, have something of the Brides of Dracula about them. Happily there's some light relief in the encores, including a dementedly fast one with a mariachi trumpet in it, and the sozzled country & western of "This One's for You".
At the moment, megastardom doesn't seem to be on Harcourt's agenda. He's too literate and complicated for that. But thank God (sorry Ed) you don't have to watch him in a sports arena.
more New music
Album: Josienne Clarke - Parenthesis, I
Redefining the self, from the most absorbing of British singer-songwriters
Music Reissues Weekly: West Coast Consortium - All The Love In The World
Top-drawer British harmony pop band whose promise was unfulfilled
CVC, Concorde 2, Brighton review - they have the songs and they have the presence
Welsh sextet bring their lively Seventies-flavoured pop frollicking to the south coast
Album: Dua Lipa - Radical Optimism
An admirable attempt to catch the magical groove that helped us through lockdown
Album: Sia - Reasonable Woman
An awesome singer-songwriter comes into her own
Mitski, Usher Hall, Edinburgh review - cool and quirky, yet deeply personal
A stunningly produced show from one of pop’s truly unique artists
Album: EYE - Dark Light
New band from MWWB singer Jessica Ball prove worthy of what came before
Nadine Shah, SWG3, Glasgow review - loudly dancing the night away
The songstress offered both a commanding voice and an almost overwhelming sound.
Album: The Lemon Twigs - A Dream Is All We Know
When self-assurance trumps unashamedly showcasing influences
Orbital, O2 Institute, Birmingham review - the techno titans celebrate their rave years in style
The 'Green' and 'Brown' albums get a full airing to an ecstatic crowd
Music Reissues Weekly: Warsaw - Middlesbrough 14th September 1977, Joy Division - Manchester 28th September 1979
Thrilling live document of one of Britain’s greatest bands
Album: Justice - Hyperdrama
French electronic dance stalwarts return from eight-year break in fine fettle
Add comment