Maybe it all has to do with the fact Ed Harcourt plays more than 10 instruments, knowing exactly
how to use them differently for giving to you diverse vibes and mood,
maybe it's that he seems to love jazz and he looks capable of making you smell the atmosphere
of a jazz session in those 40's foxtrot nights,
Maybe it has to do with his voice which creeps so gently and passionate anywhere in this bunch
of songs,
but what one can immediatly think after having got the pleasure to hear Maplewood
is that Ed knows how to make you feel warm.
It can rain outside, you can be wet and sad and lost.. but thru his melancholy you always
may find a candlelight for getting you dried and make you see the road in face of you...and moreover,
you find thru him a force and a hope you thought you didn't own.

Maplewood it's an EP composed of 6 songs, and two of them are now on his debut album
Here Be Monsterstoo: exactly the comparisons of the versions of Hanging with The Wrong Crowd and
Apple of My Eye makes you recognize how in this debut he was really just making songs as a trial:
The sound's funkier, he uses always a dubbing voice on himself giving to you the feeling
you're hearing an old vynil in an old cellar, and globally the songs are less refined.
Still... they sound majestic.
First time I have heard this album (thanx exactly to Micke's gift) I got so moved I thought
I would never ever got so into something ( after I've heard Sigur Ros, and i have known
music always can keep on surprising you) the same.
The lyrics were so winterish, so tender and you could feel ready to cry out on them anytime,
but always.. that strange way he has to put there an hook not so depressive (wwther is a
beat of music, a note he sings, a sudden change of pattern in the mood) make you never feel
really down.

I advice everyone to try to hear this record.. and I bet everyone with a minimum of sensitivity
and a minimum of exerience of lovelife would not avoid to feel the incredible magic of the pear
of the whole lot: the last song, Whistle of A Distant Train:it's LOVE made song.
A struggling request to not leave to a person who has to leave, and while you still talk...
you know you're talkin to yourself memories and whishes and hopes... cos the train has left the
truck and all you can hear is its whistle...
AMAZING AMAZING AMAZING.

If he will ever record again this song like he did with the other two I mentioned above,
then I know I will find my new hymn for a life.

God bless your soul and talent Ed, you're fantastic.

by gallimel