After Snug, the usual odd jobs like waiter, chef-in-training, and circus geek (I made that one up) supported him while he wrote close to 400 songs, which were whittled down to 11 for the CD. Drawing two more disparate but appropriate names out of the musical influence hat, Harcourt told the MTV interviewer,

"It's the Beatles meets Tom Waits, I guess. That's what a lot of people say."

There is certainly Tom Waits in the stout-hearted melancholy of "Those Crimson Tears," and there is a fascinating smash-up of Sgt Pepper falsetto melodicism and My Bloody Valentine-like drunken guitar on "Hanging With the Wrong Crowd."

Sometimes Harcourt IS the wrong crowd, as he told an interviewer from his Canadian label EMI,

"I smashed my piano at a gig recently," giggles Ed, crackling with malicious glee. "The crowd weren't paying any attention, and I was getting more and more irate. It got so bad I picked up my stool, smashed it onto my piano and yelled 'Thank you and good night!'. I've done it before - I do get a little carried away at times. I'm the Yngwie J. Malmstein of the piano!"

..."All this 'New Acoustic Movement' crap, it all sounds completely insipid to me, it doesn't connect with real emotions. I'm a very passionate, driven, sometimes aggressive person, And that comes across in my music."

"Beneath the Heart of Darkness" opens with a shuffling, jazzy, late night urban feel oddly reminiscent of Springsteen's "Meeting Across the River" from Born to Run, before the Jeff Buckley voice returns to reveal what goes on beneath that heart. A cacophonous art noise middle section and extended denouement throws Harcourt into the land of Sonic Youth, or Flaming Lips in their wildest sonic landscapes; the latter is fitting as the song features additional production and mixing from Dave Fridmann of Lips fame.

This is a brilliant singer-songwriter with an unlimited future, but with a present good enough to have produced what may be the album of the year.