Ed Harcourt - A creative furnace

To mark the release of his seventh album, “Furnaces“, we had the chance to speak with Ed Harcourt over the phone. His answers highlight the importance of the fresh stimuli that came from working with a skilled producer like Flood, who pushed the English singer-songwriter's ambition to new heights.

I noticed, on this new album, not just a new style in the sound, but also in the melodies. I get the impression that the melodic style is different from the past. So I wanted to ask you whether, in the process of making the new album, you were inspired more by the melodies or by the sound.

To be honest, I don't know, but I like to think that for me the most important thing is the melodies. I think that for every song, if you can't sit down and play it on piano or guitar, it's a bit of a failure. That said, I have the feeling that this new album came out of making the music first, and the melodies came afterwards.

Talking about the songwriting, I like “Dyonisus”, because it feels like there are several songs inside just one, and that makes me think of “Beneath The Heart Of Darkness”, because I think the same can be said about that song.

I think there's a bit of prog-rock in both songs, they're like a collage, I put them together like a puzzle. “Dyonisus” took a lot of time before I managed to put it together, I played a lot of instruments on that song, even drums at one point, and after a while I found a way to put the different parts together.

I also noticed a difference from the past in terms of the vocals: a lot of the songs in the latter part of the album are more similar to the past as far as the voice goes, but several others are sung differently, with more force.

My first album came out in 2001, so my voice has inevitably changed. Maybe it sounds so different from the previous records just because I had some lung and chest problems during the recording sessions. Some songs turned out to be particularly hard to sing, so I also had to stop and figure out why, and in some cases I tried dropping a chord, partly to get more character out of it.

I really like the female voice on the chorus of “Occupational Hazard”, can you tell me something about that?

Yes, thank you, that's my wife. We'd tried with another singer, but it didn't work, then my wife wanted to give it a try and I immediately felt that the sound of her voice was perfect for the song. I also like it because it became something very personal, she sings “you see the danger within yourself” and it's my wife singing those words to me.

How did working with the other musicians go? I read that the drummer from Warpaint played on the album, I think they're a fantastic band, and then there were other musicians too.

To be honest, apart from Stella, the other musicians came in towards the end of the recording process. Stella was in the studio for two or three days and did her drum parts, and all the other contributions were done in a day or two. Most of the time it was just me, Flood and the sound engineer. I played most of the record myself, I like getting my hands on a lot of instruments. When I play drums, I sit back a bit behind the beat and move with a certain looseness, whereas when I play guitar and piano, I do it in a more driving way.

In all good records, the tracklist is very important. Did you pay a lot of attention to putting it together?

To be honest, it was the hardest part! I think it took a month to get it into the right order. We really wanted the record to be like a book, with a beginning, a middle and an end.

This seems like a record made to be played live only by a full band. Or will you be playing some solo shows? If so, the songs will probably sound very different.

If I do end up having to play some solo shows, I will, and actually I've already tried out some songs, playing them with just piano or guitar. But you're right, it's definitely a record that needs a full band. We've done three or four shows so far and it's been a lot of fun - it's tough, of course, especially holding up vocally, but it's powerful, it's dark and it's beautiful.

I read what you wrote on Facebook about the title track - you say it's about Cameron's U-turn on the environment once he got elected. Can we say other British politicians did the same thing after the recent Brexit referendum result...

What I'd say about that is, basically, we were lied to. First of all, the referendum shouldn't even have happened, and then, the people who wanted to leave the European Union were reassured and told not to worry, that everything would be fine, no problems. As for David Cameron, I'd say he played a very clever game, and the same goes for Boris Johnson and Michael Gove. They brought in the referendum, and Cameron was against it, and then they behaved as if they'd crashed a car into another one and just walked away. They put a lot of people in a terrible situation, and so did newspapers like the Daily Mail, which ran propaganda based on false claims. So, we voted to leave, and that's a democratic thing, but we were told lies. In the end, it was all about ego and power games between politicians.

Ok, let's get back to talking about music. I think "Back Into The Woods" and this latest record are the ones where you move furthest away from compromise. Obviously they're very different - "Back Into The Woods" is very stripped-back, while this new one has a powerful, detail-rich sound - but I think you've pushed your own boundaries, albeit in different ways, with these last two albums.

I think I did that with this record. It took three or four years to make, and it's a collaboration between me and Flood. Every six months I'd give him ten songs, and he'd pick two. I finally had someone who challenged me, a mentor, for the first time. It was a joy to finally have someone I could hand control over to, someone I trusted enormously and admired deeply. I've been very, very lucky. It's an uncompromising record, but the songs are there, the melodies are there too, and so is the chaos.

Still, "Back Into The Woods" was also a kind of new exploration for you, even if very different from this new one.

In that case I already had the tracklist and knew where I wanted the record to go before I even recorded it. We went into Studio 2 at Abbey Road at 8 in the morning and finished recording at exactly 2 at night, with a whole bottle of whisky drunk. It took me longer to deal with the logistics of getting to Abbey Road than it did to actually make the record. I just wanted a record that could be played live and I wanted to do it in one or two takes, and I managed it.

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