Making his debut with the Mercury Prize-nominated ‘Here Be Monsters’ in 2001, Ed Harcourt has released music under his own name that blends raw emotions, impeccable songwriting and visionary flights of imagination. A succession of ten rich and enthralling albums have followed that first spark of his, including the intoxicating addictive ‘Strangers’ in 2004; 2013’s breathless ‘Back Into The Woods’, which was recorded in just eight hours; and ‘Furnaces’, which compellingly and entreatingly envisioned family ties confronted by the small matter of the apocalypse. After that LP in 2016, Harcourt then moved to explore the instrumental sphere with recent soundscape albums ‘Beyond The End’ and ‘Monochrome To Colour’. While recognisably bearing all the hallmarks that have made him such an admired and prolific songwriter, one of Britain’s most cherished yet inventive music creators, Ed’s new record, ‘El Magnifico’, also finds him striving for something new. It is an Ed Harcourt record, but one with a desire to seek fresh reward. “I think as a songwriter you do get to a point where you’re aware of your past and what you’ve done,” suggests Harcourt of ‘El Magnifico’’s mixture of assuredness and aspiration. “It’s knowing what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are, but also knowing how to better yourself by doing things you haven’t done before.” The album’s first four songs – which span his autobiographical ode to life in the face dodging death, ‘1987’; the golden pop of ‘Into The Loving Arms Of Your Enemy’; ‘Broken Keys’, which features Afghan Whigs’ Greg Dulli and folk singer Kathryn Williams; and ‘Strange Beauty’ – set a blistering emotional pace. Though it is testament to Harcourt’s abilities as a songwriter, that when he shifts from this opening salvo into the gentle fragility of ‘The Violence Of The Rose’, it is immediately clear it is all part of the same, wonderful journey. “There’s definitely a thread running through the album,” confirms Harcourt of the record he produced in his studio at the bottom of his garden, while also making use of the natural resonance of his local church to capture the album’s array of string parts. As the album reaches its conclusion, Harcourt’s focus adjusts once more. The passing of a close friend part inspired the tale of a wrathful angel at the centre of inverted hymn ‘Seraphina’ (“I’ve always been interested in the whole dichotomy as well of human beings being creators and destroyers,” he notes), before the album ends with its yearning yet hopeful title track, its muted Spanish trumpet peering hopefully towards the sun.