☭ marselip0910 叶俊华™

Label Piano Wolf/Fontana
Release Date Jun 15, 2010
http://www.indievox.com/a/thewall/event-post/6260

Audio Mixer: Ryan Hadlock.
Recording information: Bear Creek Studios, Woodinville, MA; Kingsize Soundlabs, Los Angeles, CA.
Illustrator: Nikki Pinder.
Photographer: Steve Gullick .Uncut (magazine) (p.108) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[An] LP as positive and confident as 2006's THE BEAUTIFUL LIE was moodily introspective."

Discography:
Here Be Monsters (25 June 2001)
From Every Sphere (17 February 2003)
Strangers (13 September 2004)
Elephant's Graveyard (compilation) (8 August 2005)
The Beautiful Lie (5 June 2006)
Until Tomorrow Then: The Best of Ed Harcourt (15 October 2007)
Lustre (14 June 2010)


01. Lustre


02. Haywired
03. Church Of No Religion


04. Heart Of A Wolf
05. Do As I Say Not As I Do
06. Killed By The Morning Sun
07. Lachrymosity
08. A Secret Society
09. When The Lost Don't Want To Be Found
10. So I've Been Told
11. Fears Of A Father



Ed Harcourt's 2010 album Lustre is a sweepingly romantic, epic, and sparkling collection of tunes that finds the British singer/songwriter ruminating on true love, money issues, and parenthood in a way that only a man who has found his place in the world can. Always a brooding type, Harcourt certainly clocks some serious vampire time here -- there's even a song titled "Killed by the Morning Sun" -- but there is a bright-eyed optimism to these songs that lifts them from the shadows. From the title track on, it is clear that Harcourt is less concerned about his own sad-sack misery and more about the redemptive qualities in his lover's eyes. He sings "Lustre when your worries are lonely/Lustre on the sweat of your lip/But lustre never shines in the final scene when sticking to the script/And I see lustre in your eyes." A similar sentiment is voiced in the grandly romantic "Haywired," where Harcourt explicitly details how his wife saved his life. He sings "The self-destructive don't believe that there's a crisis they can leave and then I married you." Then, at the three-minute mark, Harcourt, backed by thumping drums, shimmering piano, and little analog keyboard swells, delivers the album's clearest imperative: "It's not easy to be happy, get away with it." The song, much like the rest of Lustre, is aching and triumphant all at the same time. Throw in such driving and blinding melodic pop moments as "Do as I Say Not as I Do," where "trees are bending over to make room for the moon" and where Harcourt apologizes "to all the people that I might have offended it wasn't that intended/I hope we can amend it," and Lustre takes on a kind of cinematic joy where Harcourt the long-suffering vampiric troubadour steps into the light and shines. ~ Matt Collar






Ed Harcourt - "Church of No Religion (Acoustic)" (live on KEXP)



"If my last album was weighed-down, this one is a buoy", says  Ed Harcourt of his new June 15 album Lustre. "It floats. It’s about that gleaming quality – the vitality, the passion – that drives you to keep going and not give up." There's much talk from and about the critically acclaimed if commercially unheralded British singer/songwriter that indicates that his first new project in four years is all about rebirth. Stepping back from what he calls his "bitter frame of mind," becoming a father and rekindling the creative spark -- all have now brought Harcourt to a new project that happily ends his self-imposed sabbatical. It also just might be the best work he's ever done.

Recorded in Seattle with Ryan Hadlock (Blonde Redhead) -- whom Harcourt calls "the most brilliant producer I've ever worked with" -- Lustre is self-described as "epic in scope" and shifts Harcourt's pension for dark and moody compositions to a more open, brighter place. And with a self-imposed strategy of writing and reworking a fewer number of songs, each has a more dedicated focus. Lustre's title track has a subdued but bristling energy at it's heart, swirling with angelic harmonies and a classic pop melody while pulsing keys and a walloping beat drive the gorgeously dazzling "Haywired": "It's not be easy to be happy and get away with it" he sings as an ELO-ish production builds behind him. Easy? No. But for Harcourt it's clearly a great place to be. Highly recommended.