'Here Be Monsters' by Ed Harcourt

Ed Harcourt’s first album (unless you count the shortened ‘Maplewood’, bought in the days when I listened to xfm and made a real effort to stay up to date. Harcourt came along at the wrong time, really – a few years on from the release of this album, the male singer-songwriter was very much in vogue, but his career never reached the heights of many less deserving artists.

‘Here Be Monsters’ is a very solid debut – relaxed, confident, and highly enjoyable, though not without its flaws. Harcourt is at his best when he’s having fun. ‘Hanging With The Wrong Crowd’, ‘Birds Fly Backwards’ and ‘Shanghai’ are testament to this. The crowning moments of the album are near the beginning. ‘God Protect Your Soul’ is wonderfully atmospheric with its rolling bass piano notes and murky trumpet lines, and it contrasts brilliantly with the more straightforward ‘She Fell Into My Arms’. These two tracks together are possibly the best he’s ever been.

The album suffers a little when Harcourt downplays the fun. ‘Beneath The Heart of Darkness’ suffers from a noisy and extended coda which lends more weight to the song than it deserves to carry, and ‘Wind Through The Trees’ becomes very skippable after the first couple of minutes – they’re the clearest sign of the album’s debut nature. Never-the-less, he can do the heartfelt stuff – the album closes with ‘Like Only Lovers Can’ which is fragile but very lovely. So considered as a whole, the album is a success, and a real springboard for a career that should have reached greater heights than it ever did.

‘From Every Sphere’ by Ed Harcourt

Released in 2003, Ed Harcourt’s second album was a pretty obvious follow up to his first. There were no radical new directions on display, just a solid consolidation of the previous record. Sometimes, however, that’s all you need, and this record is a pleasure to listen to from start to… well, almost finish, but we’ll come to that.

The highlights, then, are packed slightly towards the beginning. ‘Bittersweetheart’ is a curiously understated opening, but lovely – an indrawn breath before the exhalation of ‘All Of Your Days Will Be Blessed’, the lead single (and, tragically, the only Ed Harcourt song ever to grace the top forty). ‘Ghost Writer’ changes tempo, though it’s impact is dulled by its similarity to ‘God Protects Your Soul’ from the previous album, a track that sounds similar but is much better. ‘The Birds Will Sing For Us’ puts things back on track. A sweet song until the ‘all die in the end’ ending, which is unexpected, but somehow works brilliantly. ‘Sister Renee’ is the sort of woozy piano ballad that Harcourt excels in. The middle section of the album dips a little – none of the tracks are bad, but they don’t hang around in your consciousness for two long. The final four tracks, however, are a structural problem. Each of them are good, and each would make a great ending song, but put together in a row, their impact is seriously blunted. ‘Watching The Sun Comes Up’ suffers the worst from this – it should be a climactic anthem, but by the time three more songs have played, its impact is lost. The fact that the title track, and actual last song, is seven and a half minutes long doesn’t help the situation either. It brings the album as a whole to fifty-six minutes, so cutting a track, or even two tracks, from the running order wouldn’t have hurt.

However, it seems harsh to quibble about this, and really, I’m nitpicking. The album is a good one.