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Ed Harcourt.
 Toward
the end of 2001, lying on the couch at a friend's place at 2am,
'Rage' showed me one of the greatest filmclips I had ever seen.
The song was She Fell Into My Arms, by Ed Harcourt, who
was standing in an elevator being harassed by an ever-increasing
number of musicians and their extraordinarily gigantic instruments.
Three albums later, and I have no fear in stating that Harcourt
is one of the greatest and most important songwriters in the
world today, ready to tear pop music from the stranglehold of
commercial interests and return it to the people.
Harcourt himself is one of the nicest people I have ever had the pleasure of talking to, even though my call woke him up in the morning. After a rousing rendition of Tenacious D's Wonderboy as he was getting dressed, we started talking about his latest record, the superb 'Strangers'.
"As far as an emotional standpoint I feel very proud of the record, but only in the sense that it's more direct and a little more personal. Obviously, it's not really mine anymore, now I've released it."
Even though I'm not the only critic in the world ready to heap praise on the man at every opportunity, sales of his records have been rather lacking throughout his career. "The public haven't taken me into their hearts as much as the record company expected," he explains solemnly. "For some reason they [EMI] haven't dropped me, and they've allowed me to make another record. God knows, I mean, perhaps they think I'm going to write a bankable song that's going to be a massive hit one day, and then they'll recoup all their money!"
With album number three just hitting stores, the ever-prolific Harcourt is already thinking about the next record. "Because I've just made quite an upbeat, romantic album, I want to do something that's totally fucked-up and dark. I feel so comfortable and happy with my life at the moment, that if I started writing songs that were just really comfortable, it would get into territory that I don't want to get into. You know, 'Domestic life is blissful, I cleaned my teeth today and hoovered the floor, yeah!'
"I've started writing songs like Satan Made Me Do It. It goes 'Satan made me do it, but all these years I used to think it was me.' It's about putting blame on everyone else, in the way that George Bush always puts blame on everyone else. You know, [attempts a Bush-esque southern drawl] 'We didn't do anythin' wro-ung...'"
"Blair's even worse because he's an intelligent man. So he's saying, 'I stuck with Bush because I wanted to keep the relationship between America and the UK in good stead.' But you know Blair is kinda fucked up, because in the early '80s he actually tried to join the Conservative Party. But they wouldn't let him in, so he joined the Labour Party instead. His idol is Margaret Thatcher, so he's not really left wing. He's brought Labour much more into the middle. The thing that he and Bush have in common is that they're both born-again Christians, which is even more scary, because that's basically a fundamental form of Christianity. Which is fucking bullshit, really."
Back to music - one of the most exciting aspects of Harcourt's music is the amazing beauty that can be found within. Without even a hint of arrogance, he agrees. "I think for me it's more a question of the music complimenting the story within the song. Like, for instance, I wanted the strings, when they came in at the end of Sister RenŽe, because the guy's dying, he's on morphine and he's lying on his bed and he's fallen in love with the nurse who's looking after him. And the morphine is gradually taking more and more hold as the strings are getting louder, the more overwhelming it is."
It's also good to know that, although he cancelled a show at the Gov two years ago, he hasn't forgotten about us. "I've been there [to Australia] twice now - wait, you're in Adelaide? I was meant to play there last time - I know, I suck. I was talking to a friend in Sydney, and he had this idea of me and my girlfriend, and him and his girlfriend, going across Australia in a motor home with a shotgun. Going from bar to bar, filming the reaction, like, 'This guy's shit!' or 'Yeah, this guy could get a record deal...'"
Ben Revi
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'Strangers' is out now through EMI.
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