Ed Harcourt

Ed Harcourt is a new man. Trust me. Actually don’t take my word for it, since Harcourt himself is the one espousing this idea.

The London songwriter’s remained relatively silent over the last four years (save for a new Russian Roulette EP), taking a sabbath season to appreciate life and figure out his artistic calling. While The Beautiful Lie released stateside last year, it was by then a rearview mirror project for Harcourt and a sign of the former version of the dark pop singer – one who read his own reviews, worried about the perceptions of others and focused more on quantity than quality.

So from a recording studio in Seattle, Harcourt’s a brand new man (and father). He’s happy and crafting songs that dare to be the same. He’s up early in the studio before anyone else will even get there. And he’s ready to unleash his life-affirming album on the world.

SSv: You’re in Seattle now to work on a new album?

Ed Harcourt: Yeah, I’m in Seattle and we just started on Monday and I’m actually in the studio now. We don’t start until 11:30, so I have some time. It’s beautiful because I can just look out at the creek and the place here is wonderful.

SSv: What are the details on the new songs?

Ed: It’s hard to explain. It’s very big and epic in scope and I’m recording it in a different way than I’ve done my other albums. I’m only going to record 12 or 13 songs at the most. I’m being quite brutal and I’m only going to have 11 songs or so on the album, so it’s quite different. It’s quite full of life. It’s a life-affirming album without coming across as cliche or glib or just sort of diluted.

SSv: Can you explain that a bit? I find that a lot. Why does a life-affirming sentiment usually come across as glib?

Ed: Well, there’s that danger in telling people what they already know. It’s pointing out the obvious and saying “life is what you make of it” or “life’s too short” and on and on. I think if you can put that across in a unique and different way, it’s my perspective on the world and that’s why I am who I am. I’m just hoping it’s really a step forward since I haven’t made a record for four years. It’s just so hard to explain it while I’m making it because I really have no idea what it’s going to sound like. We’ve already done four songs in three days but those are all sounding so different and yet amazing. Ryan Hadlock is the most brilliant producer I’ve ever worked with. He’s seriously good at his job.

SSv: That has to be an interesting artistic challenge to take the trite phrase and turn it into something meaningful.

Ed: Yeah, I have to look at the lyrics and point out something that could be so much better lyrically. I know I have to cross it out and come up with another line. I’m being quite hard on myself, which is good. It’s just a family affair overall. I have Ashley[Dzerigian] on bass who is in Great Northern and Raife Burchell on drums. And then I’m going to go to L.A. and record my wife and her two sisters – the Langley sisters – doing some three-part harmonies on stuff. It’s this big family and friends record. It’s very personal and like any other record, it’s a documentation of where I’m at right now. I just had a baby daughter who’s only seven months. They’re back in London and I’m missing them quite a lot.

SSv: Do you create your best art when you’re in those happy moments? Others love the tension or emotion out of brokenness, so I just wondered.

Ed: Well, the thing is that there’s a few songs I considered recording that I wrote two years ago when I was in a bitter frame of mind and quite jaded and that’s why I took some time off making a full record. I got really bored of myself and just wanted to step back and do a bit of writing for other people or a song score or something.

I think there is that kind of notion where you have to be totally fucked up or distraught or coming apart at the seams to make music. But I don’t believe that at all. The older I get and the more happy and content I’ve got, the more I want to push music. But I can’t ever stray from writing a pop song. I love writing the three or four minute pop song, you know?

SSv: How did you develop that deep love for a pop construct?

Ed: It comes from growing up on the Zombies and Kinks and Beatles. It comes from gorging on those influences when I was young and sort of scouring through my parents’ record collection and especially my older brother’s collection as well. As I got older, I got into weirder music. But the element of songwriting and melody has never left me and I don’t think I can ever get away from it really. I might as well embrace it. [Laughs]

SSv: I want to go back to the line where you said you were being brutal…

Ed: Well, on The Beautiful Lie, I recorded like 30 songs. It was too much. I was all about quantity rather than quality. I was doing too much in such a short space of time. I really didn’t enjoy making the record since I had to organize my wedding at the same time. I also kind of fell out with the producer. He was like a little Hitler to be honest. [Laughs] We just didn’t see eye to eye really and it was the second record we’d made together, so we just fell out.

Working with Ryan is like something’s come into Technicolor or 3-D. It’s just so fucking cool and laid back and considered. It’s just spontaneity and impulsiveness but in a good way. It’s quite exciting.

SSv: In the past, you’ve discussed wanting to experiment on various albums, so what holds true here?

Ed: Well, I’m making quite a lot of loops and things like that – little marimba loops and things. With the drums, we’ll loop the live drums. It’s all very much an enjoyable process. What’s interesting actually with this album is that I’m approaching it as an album rather than just each song. Instead of just coming to a song and then wanting to bash it out, we’re being very considerate of everything. It all seems so natural though. It’s not contrived.

SSv: In this shift from quantity to quality, what have you learned over time as a songwriter about the filters you need to have in place…

Ed: I don’t have to prove myself so much. I don’t have to say, ‘Oh, look how many songs I have. I’m so prolific.’ I’m over that now. I can just take my time. I’m going to be here for months and we’ll be working on 12 songs, so it’s a good feeling to have. I didn’t really answer the question there probably, so I’m sorry about that. [Laughs]

SSv: What’s good enough for you now that wasn’t before?

Ed: [Pause] I don’t really know. [Laughs] I’ve learned a lot about songwriting from writing with other people I guess. I know more about the craft of songwriting. The songs now are really so much better, but then again I have to think that. I don’t want to dwell on the past. I just feel very positive about everything. But then again, it’s not a record where I’ll say [changes to high voice] ‘Oh look at me, I’m so happy!’

I’m thinking of calling the record Lustre which is a word I took from Shakespeare’s King Lear and one of the character’s eyes get gouged out. He says, ‘Out, vile jelly! Where is thy lustre now?’ I mentioned it to someone else the other day and they wondered about lustre on a photo finish. I just think it’s a nice sounding word.

SSv: You’ve mentioned Ryan a few times, so how did you end up together and in Seattle in the first place?

Ed: Basically Ryan has produced a couple of my favorite records. There’s a record by the Blackhawk Session and he also did Blonde Redhead. He did Standing in the Way of Control by Gossip and did Johnny Flynn. A lot of people would recommend him or mentioned his name, so I’ve just been aware of him over the last 10 years. I was on tour last year and I paid a visit to his studio out in the sticks.

It’s taken me almost a year to make this happen because I’m funding the whole record myself. I want to make sure I own the record and the rights. I sent him lots of demos and he loved them and said that we had to make this work. So he’s bent over backwards and I’ve bent over backwards for this album, so it’s a big labor of love. It’s a big love of life album, so everyone is really in good spirits and just beavering away really.

SSv: That seems a big financial risk to take that on.

Ed: It’s a risk but to be quite honest, it’s a risk I’m quite happy to take. It’s worth it. I have faith in my career and in the songs and enough confidence in myself now that I don’t have to beat myself up anymore.

SSv: At what point did you stop beating yourself up?

Ed: I used to sit there and read reviews and like any singer you wonder about each review. But at this point, I haven’t read any reviews in the last two years. I just avoid it now. I just want to make music all the time and that’s what I’m here to do. I just don’t want to let any of it go to waste. I just want to work on things the whole time.

SSv: I want to clarify because you said you haven’t made a record in four years but you stopped reading reviews two years ago.

Ed: Well, I’m writing all the time. I’m always writing. Last year I had to tour some of The Beautiful Lie since it came out in America last year. I left EMI at the beginning of 2007 and everything ground to a halt. So I thought I would take a hiatus and take stock of where I’m at right now. So it was a transitional period and I just decided then that I was going to stop reading those things.

Now I feel I’m in a good place with a beautiful wife and daughter. I’m juggling lots of different things in my career because I do a lot of production stuff or co-writing with other people. I literally have my own little studio now in London and I’m getting that all set up. I have a roof terrace as well in my studio, so that’s cool. [Laughs]

SSv: So what’s the final timeline?

Ed: We should be finished in mid-July and I imagine we’ll be releasing it at the beginning of next year. I will be licensing it and wanting to set it up properly. It will be coming out of Dovecote Records in America. I just have to find labels for the other countries, you know? It’s quite nerve-wracking but really exciting at the same time.

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Tagged as: London, Pop

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