This one slipped through the net until now around here, but it's not a bad introduction to this highly rated singer/songwriter should you have missed his Mercury Prize-nominated album "Here Be Monsters" from 2001.
"Still I Dream Of It" may be tough to lay your mitts on, as it's a strictly limited-edition release (3,000 on CD, I'm told), but it's well worth having a scrabble for. It's a graceful, paino-led ballad actually written by legendary Beach Boys' leader Brian Wilson, and soon bears all the hallmarks of the sandpit-dwelling one.
The original can be found on Wilson's Don Was-produced "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times", but Harcourt gives it a suitably dignified rendering, with the swirly strings curling around his respectful, compression-addled vocals. The whole thing's entirely stately until - from apparently nowhere - the final two minutes take a drift into surprise mantra territory (not entirely dissimilar in feel to the Velvets' "Venus In Furs"), and clouds of fragrant feedback carry the track off into the ether.
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At least in terms of the ending, not entirely what your reviewer had expected. But it's none the worse for that.
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