Sometimes described inaccurately as a native of Brighton, the young Harcourt is in fact from nearby Lewes, a peculiar town where the local paper boasts headlines like 'Is the Holy Grail buried in Lewes?' (honestly!) and effigies of the Pope are burned every November 5th, in a rabid display of anti-catholicism seen nowhere else in England.
In short it's an odd place, and though Harcourt might be initially lumped in with the exponentially growing singer-songwriter scene, his music is just a bit more interesting and off-kilter than a lot of his peers.
Last year's low-fi debut mini-album 'Maplewood' evoked the extremes of Tom Waits and Prince without sounding forced, so it's a relief that this first full-budget effort manages to expand his sound without resorting to blandness.
The opener, recent single 'Something In My Eye' features powerchords for the first time on a Harcourt tune, yet it's the wheezy horns and string parts which are memorable, while even the ominous 'God Protect Your Soul' cracks into a spooky carnival section halfway through.
A re-recorded 'Hanging With The Wrong Crowd', probably Harcourt's catchiest melody, retains the original version's charm, and the delightfully clumsy Bono-sings-soul 'Apple Of My Eye' is just as good. You'll have gathered that we're not talking about nu-metal here, but 'Beneath The Heart of Darkness', which unabashedly flirts with an outrageously ugly industrial mid-section shows just how open Harcourt's ears are.
The oddly crass and dated 'Shanghai' meanwhile is downright resistible, but how many fairly posh young Englishmen can bear comparisons with Waits at all?
