Ed Harcourt

Ed Harcourt has never been shy about citing his influences, including Tom Waits and Ray Davies of The Kinks (not to mention Shakespeare). But with Strangers, he seems to be emerging from behind the self-imposed walls of his influences. A songwriter equally capable of penning up-tempo piano rockers and moving ballads, Harcourt here emerges more comfortable in the part-time role of traditionally sensitive singer-songwriter. Tracks like the sorrowful “This One’s for You” offer nods to Nick Drake, and a debt to Elvis Costello is emerging, particularly in melody-driven tunes like the title track and the album’s spare center “Something to Live For.”

Strangers is something of a step back from Harcourt’s more ambitious and sprawling earlier efforts, although this album still covers a lot of territory. The opening “The Storm Is Coming” is a psychedelic blast reminiscent of mid-‘90s Primal Scream. While nothing here is quite as loud as the album’s opening minute, tracks like “Let Love Not Weigh Me Down” achieve a controlled orchestral cacophony that speaks to Harcourt’s increasingly sophisticated touch in the studio (he produced, alongside Jari Haapalainen and Hadrian Garrard, both of whom play extensively on the album). The album’s serene middle suggest that, at heart, the outspoken Harcourt is becoming slightly more mature and at ease with his artistry. Harcourt has never been a very memorable lyricist, and some of the songs here are marred by pat sentiment and anguished clichés. But as Harcourt grows as a songwriter, his tendency to be overbearing diminishes, and what emerges is a competent, emotive and increasingly unique piano-man. - Cory O'Malley

Can an artist be too talented for his own good? Multi-instrumentalist, multi-headed musical hydra, singer/song-summoner Ed Harcourt begs the question on his fourth studio effort, Strangers. From the opening guitar squelch that soars and cuts into the lead-off track, "The Storm Is Coming," it's apparent that Harcourt is on a creative rage. He layers piano, guitars, and keyboards all the while crooning and wailing. Similarly, "Let Love Not Weigh Me Down" builds weeping violin and smashing guitars on top of plinky piano as Harcourt cries on about how being in love is to affirm all that is positive about being alive. He even gets around to updating the Police's "Born in the Fifties" with "Born in the '70s," a deceptively jaunty plea for older naysayers to give his generation a chance or get out of the way. The overall effect ends up sounding something like a reworking of "Under Pressure" featuring Ted Leo and Rufus Wainwright backed by the Flaming Lips. Needless to say, Harcourt's exploding arteries of emotion can get a bit tiring as he insists on building the volcano of tension track after track. However, just when you think it's about time to call "uncle," Harcourt lets go of your arm with tracks like "The Trapdoor," a Nick Drake meets Neil Young-style harvest moon of a song that sinks into your gut. Despite being a crack melodicist with a knack for a catchy lyric and an iconoclast's taste for oddly disparate but somehow fitting musical influences that range from Chet Baker and Todd Rundgren to Sonic Youth and Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Harcourt isn't a household name. Occupying the same deeply harmonic and beatifically sanguine post-Radiohead space in the music scene as similarly inclined cult figures Andrew Bird and Eric Matthews, Harcourt seems the most obvious graduate of the post-rock class to succeed in a Badly Drawn Boy cum Prince kind of way. So, why hasn't it happened yet? Maybe it's because Strangers finds Harcourt in the uncomfortably enviable position of being something along the lines of a thinking man's Chris Martin, which is to say, Strangers is a devastatingly accomplished album. ~ Matt Collar, Rovi