Ed Harcourt / The Smoke Fairies

The Bloomsbury Ballroom, owned by Vince Power, is a new, recently refurbished, venue and is absolutely stunning. It is located next to Bloomsbury Square and the grand art-deco ballroom itself is below street level with a huge wooden dance floor. Silver ruched curtains provide a backdrop to the stage, with multi-coloured strip lights and glitter balls on the ceiling panels.

An all female support tonight is provided by The Smoke Fairies, with two guitars and pretty, ethereal voices, and Cortney Tidwell, who has some interesting songs – one described as “about an alien girl who falls in love with a boy from earth”. Sadly, she doesn’t hold the crowd’s attention and there is a lot of background noise during her performance.

The main man, Ed Harcourt, looks suave dressed all in black and has the undivided attention and palpable devotion of his audience from the start of the set. I have often seen him play in London and he is one of my favourite singer-songwriters, though he would probably resent the “singer-songwriter” label. He has a very distinctive rich voice and evokes inevitable comparisons with Rufus Wainwright due to being piano-based and producing similarly beautiful orchestrated sounds on his albums and at his live shows.

Ed is on fine form tonight and treats us to a long set incorporating much of his back catalogue and a few songs from his new album, ‘The Beautiful Lie’. There are several solo numbers but for most of the set he is joined by Leo Abrahams on guitar and backing vocals, and Hadrian Garrard on the trumpet. A looping machine is also used to great effect on some of his songs including ‘Something in My Eye’, the set opener, and ‘Fireflies Take Flight’. The highlights for me are ‘She Fell Into My Arms’, a perfect love song with the crowd joining in the refrain of “If you need to kiss me, then you’ll most definitely miss me when I’m gone…”, ‘I’ve Become Misguided’, where Ed looped his banjo sounds and swapped to guitar, the infectious ‘Visit from the Dead Dog’, the wild fairground organ melodies of ‘Scatterbraine’ and ‘Until Tomorrow Then’ which suited the venue perfectly with a dance hall band sound and crackling microphone.

The main set closes with ‘Apple of My Eye’ which is a definite crowd pleaser and Ed daren’t leave it out. There is a two song encore finishing with the dramatic and thundering ‘Shanghai’, and, despite noisy cheering, clapping and stamping, the audience are disappointed when he doesn’t reappear for a second time...

Ed Harcourt has been accused in the past of being aloof but tonight he seems genuinely touched by, and appreciative of, his London audience and their enthusiastic and vocal response to all the songs.

I would highly recommend the Bloomsbury Ballroom as a venue and Mr Harcourt of course, who has a few dates left on this current tour!

FUTURE GIGS

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