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Ed Harcourt
Lustre
By George A. Paul
Since the early 2000s, Ed Harcourt has made several captivating albums, collaborated with Jamie Cullum, Nada Surf, the Streets, and Ron Sexsmith and toured here often, but he still remains under the radar to most American listeners. Lustre, the Wimbledon-bred singer/pianist’s fifth set of studious chamber pop is often lighter in spirit than 2008’s heavy, stylistically diverse Beautiful Lie.Chalk it up to the welcome feminine energy instilled by the Langley Sisters (Harcourt’s wife Gita and her two siblings), who provide background vocals. Opening with lush estrogen-fueled sighs and subtle orchestration, the title track revolves around finding beauty in the bleakest situations.
Elsewhere, “Haywired,” a personal ode to his wife (“I must have had a peculiar kind of charm for you to fall in love with me/With my bird’s nest hair and Popeye arms”), has prominent Mellotron and sampled sonic cacophony swells. Harcourt’s knack for vivid lyrical imagery comes to the fore on an inviting “Do as I Say, Not as I Do.” Wrapped in muted keyboards, a circuitous piano line and sax flourishes, he sings in falsetto (“Vice is a virtue with cameras and curfews/Little scaremongers of impending doom/Political medusas make us stare like statues/Empty all the pockets of the victims of the baby boom”). Equally effective is “Lachrymosity,” where Harcourt is alone at a piano with simple instrumentation. Dramatic album closer “Fears of a Father” finds the musician owning up to parental responsibilities to an uplifting arrangement that recalls one of those soaring 1970s Elvis Presley ballads.
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