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Aug 15, 2009 Web Exclusive By Laura Studarus

Reflecting on a recent show at Los Angeles’ Bordello Bar, Ed Harcourt sounds a bit flustered. “I always seem to be having a bad time on stage,” he moans. “And then I get off stage, and I’m shocked when people say it was good.” Although, when later expounding on a desire to smarten-up his stage act, Harcourt warns, “I don’t think it’s ever going to be too slick—I just can’t do it.” In his head, it’s clear that he can envision the perfect performer—or rather a stereotype to avoid. “You can’t just be standing there in jeans and a t-shirt, looking at your feet, pressing a few guitar pedals. It gets boring after awhile.”

Fat chance he’s is any danger of growing dull. At 31, London-based Harcourt has been, slowly but surely, gaining ardent fans at home and abroad since his 2001 debut, Here Be Monsters. Crafting piano-driven, romance-drenched odes to love and melancholy—lush instrumentation contrasting with emotionally raw lyrics—his catalog is ripe with clever word-play that we should all be so lucky to have gracing the pages of love and breakup letters alike. A voracious reader, Harcourt credits the likes of Mark Twain and Walt Whitman as influences alongside musical forefathers Hoagy Carmichael and Chet Baker. However, it’s Hunter S. Thompson’s “complete independence and freedom of self” that truly captures Harcourt’s attention. “I think,” he says, pondering his attraction to the late writer’s philosophy, “[it’s] an objective for a lot of people who want to create something long standing.”

Perhaps Harcourt is edging toward convincing a wider audience to embrace the “long standing” potential of his music—even while adapting it to modern technology. His newest release is a digital EP called Russian Roulette—housed in a small flash drive shaped like a bullet. An intriguing concept tying together six songs based off the idea of “six chambers in the gun, six songs on the bullet,” Harcourt admits the project had a very simple origin. “I had to go to the SXSW Festival and I had to have something to promote. So we just kind of whacked it out in a week,” he continues, amusement evident in his voice. “It should have been a gun! Although that would have been bad, especially in America! You tend to like those.” Talk of actual guns continues, with Harcourt admitting he’s planning on soon having the ultimate American experience—visiting a Seattle-area shooting range. An admitted gun novice, Harcourt again laughs, “I’ll get my John Deere cap on and go shoot some lead!”

Boasting not only Second Amendment-friendly packaging, Russian Roulette also features six music videos, a project that Harcourt felt was a natural extension to his musical career and an obvious component of the “MTV Generation” experience. “You’ve got to have a bit of performance and conceptual artistry, you know? I’m very influenced by nonsensical imagery. And dreams, and things like that,” he adds, citing both a video he made featuring “a seven-foot-tall Polish man dressed as a Yeti” and a completely underwater photo shoot promoting his previous album The Beautiful Lie as examples. For Russian Roulette’s centerpiece video “Black Feathers,” Harcourt and fellow Brit, music-video director Simon Hilton, headed out to the woods of southern England—creating a dark clip filled with nightmarish imagery. “It’s quite horrible isn’t it?” Harcourt says, amused. “My friend said at the end, there’s a little glint in my eye…he said I just look like this horrible old dog!”

In addition to a promotional Russian Roulette tour, Harcourt returned stateside with an additional goal: encamping to a studio located in “Sasquatch country, up near Seattle” to begin work on his next project, an album that he promises is, “very upbeat and quite euphoric. There’s a kind of slice of orchestral gospel feel going on with some of the songs.” Featuring the talents of his wife Gita Harcourt, who also performs in 1940s throwback girl-group The Langley Sisters, and production work by Ryan Hadlock (“He’s just an amazing producer. He’s just a really cool guy…I’m not just saying that because I’m right in the middle of an album!”) Harcourt hopes to have the yet-untitled, completely self-funded album ready for an early 2010 release.

When suggested that, in the age of MySpace/Facebook/Twitter, there might be something about his life that would shock fans, Harcourt is quick to put the notion to rest, listing off his hobbies as the usual: “You know, everything everyone else does: A bit of gardening. Walk the dog. Go out to the gym…try to loose some weight. Go to the beach. Go up the hillside. Fly a kite. Ride a unicycle…a unicycle or unicorn, depending on how I feel.”

Will Harcourt be remembered as the ultimate “unicycle or unicorn” jockey? As a consumé musician? Harcourt isn’t so quick to assign himself a legacy. “I don’t want to sound cliché, you know? I could say I’m sure everyone wants to be remembered as someone who’s true to their beliefs and true to themselves. How I will be remembered is probably as a psychotic drunkard!”

Say what you might Ed, but one thing’s for sure—you’ll never be remembered as boring.

(www.edharcourt.com)