I don’t know if you heard but there is apparently some kind of Acoustic revolution going on. I heard it was fuelled by a delayed desire for all the young dudes to want to become Bob Drake or something? You heard about it? Maybe it takes the end of a millennium to do something like this presumed un-plugged mass mutiny. Shall we just be done with it and blame Freddy Durst…I think so! I’m sure this quiet and calm revolution is just a media myth tho and months from now we’ll all be moaning about how unjust it is that great records with real guitars, backing the ejection of real emotion don’t ever get on Top of the Pops. Examples? Y’know, you’ve got your Tom Waits’ whose genius never gets anywhere near where it should and a cluster of folks still claiming Captain Beefheart is some kind of messiah. This may be true. It’s certainly those two who are fuelling some of the most lyrically inspired and commercially experimental tuneage around at the moment. So, in walks Ed Harcourt with his first full album 'Here Be Monsters' following up last years mini 'Maplewood'.

On first listen this album seemed to walk past me - a bit like the time I passed Martin Clunes from Men Behaving Badly in the street, only realised why I recognised him a day later, but that’s an aside. This album is like that missed then found sensation. It’s not immediate but like all good things, it takes time to make some kind of great sense. Take ‘Those Crimson Tears’ it has a ring of [shudders] Coldplay, but unlike the kings of suburbia, Ed manages to sound like it is his heart-shaped tears playing the piano whilst in the background someone jams with him on a violin.

If this was filed simply into a neat record collection, it’s somewhere between the subdued summer anthems of Pulp (see: ’Apple of my eye’ with it’s hand claps, trumpets and lines-of-rhyme like “I’m sick of this angst, don’t need thanks…”, the sonic sound of Spiritualized and Mr.Harcourt would even be safe on the same stage as The Nu Acoustic Move (Turin Brakes, et al 2000-01) ..And for all the indie snobs out there, still wearing Gallagher-anorak’s like it’s ’94 whilst sipping on one pound pints of cider’n’blacks in smelly student union bars, you might like to note that Tim Holmes of Death in Vegas co-produced this album. That’ll make 'here be monsters' easier to file in your collections, I hope.

Let’s move away with the stereotypes of fans and get you lost for a moment. No, not get lost and go away, come back!! Much like Sparklehorse - the band they’re about to go on tour with - this album has it’s moments of abstract havoc, ’Beneath the heart of darkness’ is the best example with it’s gradually built walls of feedback, distorted drum machines, piano, rewinding tape samples and brass instruments; that then suddenly stop dead... For about 2seconds it’s pure relief as the stabbing static fades and the sounds of discontent are more subtle and distressed with a piano plus the spoken repeat of the song title, as song fades away. This is just one exam of the orchestrated huge soundscapes played off against the tiny world of one man and his piano. It’s this kind of individualism that is important in society today, people taking time out with their imagination, instead of time to buy themselves a future in one way or another. Maybe buying this is a beginning to the end of everything? Maybe that is a good thing. Maybe…

In conclusion: this is monster, monster, spanking gorgeous album - it’s as simple as that, or is it?