Ed Harcourt

Do *you* know who Ed Harcourt is? The boy in the beaten-up velvet jacket picks up his cup. "He's 28, newly and happily married, the son-in-law of an ocarina maker and the great-nephew of Elizabeth David ...he's an agnostic brought up Protestant with a Buddha necklace... a nervous ball of energy, a little black sheep." The boy takes a sip. "And he's a solo artist, a collaborator, a session musician, a part-time blues player and thrash metal band member ... a collector of weird instruments, and a musical whore." Ed Harcourt puts down his coffee and laughs. Ed Harcourt is a bit raffish and gloriously hungover, but also the best company you could imagine over a fried breakfast in Soho on a warm Saturday morning. He's also hard-working, creative and sickeningly prolific. *The Beautiful Lie*, his fifth album in six years, in between outside projects with bands like Wild Boar and the Dead Thank Yous, is the latest in his line of inventive, adventurous records. And it's the best thing he's ever done. How do you see your albums now? Ed slices his poached egg perfectly in two, and thinks back to 2000. "I think of *Maplewood* now as the precocious youngest child record. The one everybody loved dearly and still thinks of very fondly, but it's still full of arrogance. *Here Be Monsters*... was my chronic bronchitis, coughing up blood record. *From Every Sphere* was an end-of-an-era, end-of-a-relationship, crying into my coffee record... and *Strangers* my heady, hazy, oh-my-God I'm in love again, excuse me while I vomit into my coffee record." So does that make *The Beautiful Lie* the post-wedded bliss, settled-down, mature record? "Hardly." Ed laughs. "It's all gothic storytelling, madness, darkness and despair! But it's a record where I bury my ego and look outwards for a change." (Read more on www.edharcourt.com)