Ed Harcourt brings out an absolutely anonymous, empty and easily dismissed record, with every attribute to have distinguished his music scooped out.

Banal, Strangers presents less than an hour of simple refrains, which story is easily noticeable much before they come to the end. The expected about turn, in fact, delay since first tracks and the only one surface in front of us is a simple wall which is impossible to watch further just because there's nothing at the end to see and the refold on ourself gives no expected wishes cause there's no basic raw material.

What scares about Ed Harcourt third effort, is the plain and weak symphony which take place since first flaps, with no perpetuity solution. Variegate sonorous sources that previously had rewarded it, reel against their chief moving themselves upstream, invalidating the result.

Moving forward by constrained thrusts when you can't catch a glimpse of the road, hardly gives unexpected outcomes, and even hardly that outcomes will be positive. So we can see Ed imprisoned in the fabrication of slightly efficacious refrains which pretend to be characterised by a fake heterogeneity of sounds.

More successful composition, again, are "Trapdoor" (but Devendra Banhart is still too much far away) and "Kids (Rise From The Ashes)" in which, before the expected take off, he appeals to the usual piano stereotype and in the long run it cannot no annoy (same address for "Music Box").

This is the matter: if originality is overvalued, banality will never be denounced enough! The problem, by now, is not the lack of sources, but it's rather the excessive answers confronted to demands that, even growing exponentially, will never cover the "need of publishing" of this time.

By now everything will be sold and there's no need to find connivent magazine editors, because purchaser are already accomplice on their own: why trouble so much?

Suppressible!

Value of the record:
1.50 $

[An Italian and more precise review on «Winnicott]