Photo: Press
Towards the culmination of a typically intense and lyrical performance, Ed Harcourt says "No one has an original idea any more, including me. I've based my whole career on it". Sure he borrows heavily from Nick Cave and his voice can inhabit the strangled anguish of Jim Morrison, but his dense, rich melodies are still very much his own.
The Village Underground set is played in a pea souper of dry ice and air raid searchlights, the vertiginous chamber of its brick warehouse seeming to roll Victorian London and the Blitz into one. Though mere chimera in this mist, the band, with wife Gita on violin, deliver Harcourt's songs with a knockout punch. Following collaborations with the likes of Paloma Faith, The Libertines, Sophie Ellis-Baxter and Marianne Faithfull, Harcourt has returned to composition, aided, he says, by boxing. The noble art has cleared his head and delivered the intensely political and personal album Furnaces.
He opens in storming fashion from it with 'Occupational Hazard' and the scissoring and chiming guitars on 'Loup 'Garou' are reminiscent of mid-life U2. Subsequent numbers, 'Immoral' and 'Dionysius' are pure film score gothic. Then Trump gets a pummelling in 'The World Is On Fire'.
The angst and sadness in his songs sound genuine. His left hand not so much strums at the guitar as repeatedly scrubs it, as if trying to remove a stubborn spot; a manifestation of inner turmoil that he just can't dislodge. Part of Harcourt's secret is the expression of this darkness with an engaging levity and amidst the apocalyptic roar there are the beautiful piano ballads 'You Give Me More Than Love' and achingly poignant 'The Last of Your Kind'.
He revisits 'Beneath the Heart of Darkness' from 2001 Mercury nominated Here Be Monsters. He stumbles over 'Church of No Religion', quipping "These fucking old songs!" and the best moment of the night is the musically witty 'God Protect Your Son' . However it's the new material that blazes. He's back, Kanye West was at the sound check, but this was Harcourt's night alone, resplendent in his grandfather's Royal Engineers' jacket. "The next song's called 'Nothing But A Bad Trip'. Enjoy yourselves!". It seems they did.
