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Ed Harcourt | Here Be Monsters
Music for the rainy, red-and-brown-leaves-dropping, melancholic season.
CD, EMI
Tekst: Matthijs de Raad
Publicatiedatum: 10 oktober 2002
Autumn. The rainy, red-and-brown-leaves-dropping, melancholic, and — sad but true — relationship-breaking season. The season in which you go out for a long walk through a deep forest. Taking your dog with you. The season in which you lie in front of your fireplace, with your girlfriend lying next to you. You're listening to the storm outside, which makes it even cosier inside. And then you'll wonder what to put in your CD player. Here's your answer, and it is named Ed Harcourt.
Last year Harcourt released a six-track mini album called Maplewood, which gave us a first glimpse of his capabilities. Recorded on a four-track, it contained rudimentary, stripped-down, but very emotional songs. Two of them are on the Here Be Monsters track list too: Apple Of My Eye and Hanging With The Wrong Crowd.
This year's Here Be Monsters is his first full album. And I must say, this is almost a masterpiece. Its rich melodies, arrangements, range of instruments, beautiful texts, and a very special voice make you want to listen to this one again and again and again. The instruments he uses throughout the whole album range from a simple piano to electric guitars, wurlitzers, trumpets, and even a mud-skipping clown. His arrangements sometimes even sound Flaming Lips-like. But most of the songs have a very natural and acoustic sound to them. And to continue, his voice: Harcourt has a voice that recalls Elliot Smith's and Tom Waits' but is especially his own. It's not very full, but is warm and melancholic. At the end of Shanghai, and in God Protect Your Soul, he proves he can sing rough and loud, but most of the time we hear him as an emotional, warm, and melancholic singer. And then his lyrics: They are almost all about love. Not the crappy Backstreet Boys love, but a real deep and true love: "You look so beautiful and I look such a mess," in Shanghai. The lyrics are also very metaphorical: "Spluttering like an army of artillery sporadically firing," in Beneath The Heart Of Darkness. They sometimes remind one of Rufus Wainwright, but also some of the works of Jeff Buckley. The songs range from very happy, as in Apple Of My Eye (with almost too much handclapping), to dark and, again, melancholic, like in Those Crimson Tears. All in all, it is an album packed with beautiful songs. My favorite is the poppy She Fell Into My Arms. Listen to the simple but brilliant, frisky piano riffs and the playful lyrics, and you'll instantly fall in love with the man.
If you want to know something less good about the album, I have to say that the song Beneath The Heart Of Darkness is a bit weird and different. It starts promisingly, but at the end it works towards a cacophony of sound, almost paranoia. It doesn't fit with the rest of the album. Maybe it is to wake up the ignorant listener, but to me it is a dissonant component of the whole. Remarkable is that it's the only song which Harcourt didn't write all by himself: Co-musician Hadrian Gerrard had a part in it too.
To end my song of praise on behalf of Mr. Harcourt, if you find yourself in the situation I described in the beginning, do not hesitate to put this CD in your player. You won't regret it. And, no, you can enjoy this album the whole year long!
http://www.kindamuzik.net/recensie/ed-harcourt/here-be-monsters/1937/
Meer Ed Harcourt op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/ed-harcourt
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