Beautiful Lie

Beautiful Lie is a new age concert rolled neatly into a CD. Ed Harcourt's newest venture is a pleasure to listen to, as each song is distinctive from the next and in highly intriguing ways.

There are hints of many familiar musical styles within Harcourt's CD. "The Pristine Claw" has an acoustic taste, reminiscent of artists like Jack Johnson and John Mayer. "Scatterbraine" fuses old piano classics with a mocking song about a scatterbrain. And just for good measure, the very next song, "Rain on the Pretty Ones" is a beautifully placed and emotionally heightened number, with piano accompaniment.

It is a fascinating thing, indeed, to hear Harcourt fuse classical piano with a rock sensibility. Each song starts an entirely new chapter, and though the differences between the various songs may seem surprising at first, somehow everything seems to work in conjunction.

Harcourt has a tremendous range of voice, and combined with his various musical talents, Beautiful Lie presents a unified truth: Ed Harcourt knows how to give his listeners everything, in one deceptively small package, that is bursting with so much.