Harcourt's Treat

“I am a tempestuous person. I can be very aggressive and yet I can be very over-sensitive. I can be arrogant and I can be modest. It’s all contradictions. There’s a lot of conflict in my head, like everyone, but I just happen to express mine. It is like an open wound that people can rub salt in.”

Ed Harcourt is trying that most difficult of processes, to define what it means to be him. The 23 year-old Harcourt is already being feted as one of the year’s hottest properties, thanks to his stunning debut mini-album Maplewood and the current follow-up, the magnificent Here Be Monsters, both of which have seen Harcourt compared to some of the great songwriters of the last decades.

“Writing is a cathartic process,” explains Ed. “It really means a lot to me. It is my life. It is a natural craft that comes from within. But at the same time, I want to have a laugh as well. You couldn’t ask for a better vocation.”

Harcourt obviously takes his vocation seriously, and he is a man possessed of a great ambition. “I am always attempting to do things, whether that be writing the perfect pop song or trying to push the boat out, experimentally,” he admits. “Or sometimes trying to merge the two.”

Not just a seriously determined songwriter, but a prolific one too. By the time he was signed to Heavenly Records, he had a “treasure trove” of 300 songs to choose from, which has now risen to 400. The 15 or so that he has already released have been greeted with open arms by critics slavering over his every nuance.

Despite the waves of adulation, however, Harcourt still gets annoyed by some of the column inches about him: “I don’t mind if someone gets what I am trying to do and just doesn’t like it, but every now and then that they say something and it’s obvious that they just don’t fucking get it.”

“I have to stop reading reviews,” he admits, “because either my head inflates or I get really fucked off. It’s a willpower thing and I am stopping myself reading them.”

Thankfully, nobody has suggested that Harcourt is just another self-indulgent singer-songwriter, a species he holds in some contempt, it seems: “There are too many earnest, self-righteous songwriters out there who need to take their finger out of their arse and look at themselves.”

Harcourt’s songs and innovative, original arrangements could not be described as angsty. Flirting with soul, jazz, blues, pop and rock, Here Be Monsters is a wonderful album that will doubtless figure in many end-of-year round-ups.

“I think it is a deep album and it is quite intense sometimes. But, it is very romantic. Love and death: those old chestnuts,” he laughs. “It’s a very organic, warm sounding album.”

I confess that the song I felt worked least, ‘Beneath The Heart Of Darkness’, has grown on me somewhat since I reviewed the album. He smiles again.

“It is actually meant to be an oral version of Apocalypse Now, and I know that sounds like prog-rock concept crap,” he admits. “The thing is, it’s basically a sonic assault that is meant to build and build, trying to take you to a certain place, sonically and musically.

“That track divides people and that is really fucking important. It’s healthy,” he enthuses. “There is nothing more suspicious than getting amazing reviews everywhere.”

So what are his hopes for Monsters?

“I really hope it does well,” he says evenly. “I think it is a really accessible album and it has lots of things to it. To some people it’s really immediate, others think it is a real grower. I think it is going to be a slow burner: that is kind of what we are aiming for, because it would be a real shame if it were to disappear without trace.”

At the moment, though, there is little fear of Harcourt or his music fading from view. In fact, the opposite is true, as everything seems to be happening at once.

“You get caught up in a whirlwind, a twister of insanity, of check-ins and check-outs, but it is so much fun as well. It’s like I’m growing up in public in my twenties: I’m sure I’m going to have a mid-life crisis soon,” he laughs, before getting more serious. “My parents really wanted me to go to university. I explained that this is what I want to do, and they were really upset. But now they realise that it is paying off, which is good. If everyone did what their parents wanted them to do, we wouldn’t have any culture, so it is important that you go with your gut instinct.”