Album Review: Ed Harcourt, Furnaces

Forget any notions you may harbour of safe singer-songwriter territory. This is an angry, abrasive and fiery album that more than lives up to its title. Harcourt’s rage is matched by the studio wizardry of Flood, who bathes these apocalyptic missives in off-kilter rhythms, syncopated beats, murky, fluid basslines, screeching guitars and unsettling effects. Behind all the odd whirs and angry guitars, however, beats a strong pop sensibility, as on the infectious anger of ‘Loup Garou’, the haunting chorus to ‘The World Is On Fire’, the insistent ‘Occupational Hazard’ and the arms-in-the-air euphoria of ‘Last Of Your Kind’, which comes across like Keane with pedals turned to maximum distortion.

Harcourt plays almost everything himself, but on some tracks, he ropes in Warpaint drummer Stella Mozgawa, bassist Tom Herbert of The Invisible & Polar Bear, vocalist Hannah Lou Clark, and percussionist Michael Blair, a regular Tom Waits collaborator.

The stomping rocker ‘There Is A Light Below’ is not unlike ‘Elevation’-era U2; all bruised, distorted bass, rattling drums and toe-tapping melody, complete with call-and-response chorus. ‘Dionysus’ starts like a gentle ivory tinklier but quickly mutates into a post-apocalyptic horror show, all military drums, menacing effects and a wall of distorted noise, with Harcourt raging from the centre of the storm.

The superb title-track is magnificent, an ecological polemic that strikes the perfect balance between Harcourt’s emotion and Flood’s gothic production: think Elbow covering Simple Minds. Other highlights include the sweeping, string-soaked ‘You Give Me More Than Love’ and the atmospheric ‘Immoral’, where Harcourt’s voice switches from scratchy, weary rock roar to eerie falsetto in the twist of a chord, while the staccato drums form a lurching backdrop.

Not an easy listen, then, but a rewarding one.