Get to Know Ed Harcourt Better in our Exclusive Interview for his New Album 'Strangers'!
Let's talk about the new album, 'Strangers'. You've been quite critical of your work in the past - are you happier with this album?
The only reason I've been critical of the albums before is so I would push myself forward and try and make better albums than before. I just felt that I was quite lazy in the past within the whole process of making it. I didn't focus myself enough in re-editing songs, rearranging them, making sure they were actually good, covering them with atmospherics. I wasn't paying as much attention to the lyrics as I have done on the new album, and I think that on the last album there were a few questionable songs, lyrically.
Would you ever go back and change any songs you're not happy with?
No, not really, because I think it's interesting for people to see how someone progresses...a lot of the time people get worse, they make an amazing album and they just go downhill and hopefully I'm going like that (motions up).
Is that how you feel?
It feels like that with this album, yeah. I can be confident without being arrogant.
Is this the best representation of who you are?
Definitely, I think it's much more of a personal, emotional album without it being wailing histrionics a la Whitney Houston! It says much more about me and my life, and it feels more expressive...none of the music's played to a click, it's all very organic.
It doesn't seem that long since the last album...
Well it's been 2 years since the last album; I had to wait a year for it to come out, and it was a patchy, unfocused album. There were parts of it that were really good, but other parts were pretty dire.
I read somewhere that you said you were depressed whilst making the second album - do you only remember that feeling in retrospect?
I think so - I didn't think I was depressed at the time, but now I look back at the music and it just sounds weighed down by something, I don't know what, but there's some kind of melancholy running through it. But it wasn't just that, it was very heavy and leaden and doughy, almost, and not intense.
And the first album?
The first album was quite naive - it was the first time I'd been on my own, in a big studio for a month, let loose, with free rein to do what I wanted. The second album - I actually made a double album, so if it had been released as a double 'opus', it would have failed even more spectacularly and more pompously, so therefore it would have been more of a statement. But it was too indulgent and too expensive to release as a double album for a second album. I'm just being hard on myself so I can continue to make better albums, just to leave the past behind and forget about it, rather than dwelling on it and living in it. |
About Petrol Records
About Petrol Records
