Album: Ed Harcourt

Ed Harcourt's albums Maplewood and Here Be Monsters drew comparisons to LA piano-pop sophisticates such as Nilsson, Wilson, Webb and Newman, but this ambitious follow-up finds him striking out for riskier, less polished territory. The use of instruments such as wheezing pump organ and dainty glockenspiel, and the imagery of insects, snakes and "creepy crawlies" in songs such as "Ghost Writer" and "Fireflies Take Flight", suggests he's trying to emulate the organic, haunted air of Sparklehorse. Sadly, he over eggs many songs with arrangements that bind them, rather than open them up.

For all that, it's an interesting, intriguing album, shot through with thoughts of death and separation (Harcourt wrote most of the songs in the house of his recently-deceased grandmother, and was clearly preoccupied by the bereavement). "Bleed a River Dry" is the most obvious haunted house song here, with a restrained trumpet solo and strings evoking the theme of being closed in by one's moods and surroundings; "Sister Renée" presents a morphiated terminal patient's affection for his carer; "From Every Sphere" regards the stars as souls of the dead; and "All of Your Days Will Be Blessed" employs startling imagery – "With beady black eyes the bluebird has died/ Its feathers have dried, it couldn't survive" – to underline its message of grasping the solace of love whilst one can. Set against these is "Watching the Sun Come Up", which finds the singer facing the future with renewed hope – "I can attack the day with the will to burn" – though it's debatable whether that on its own is enough to lift the spirits.