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Baker's Dozen

Death Before Silence: Ed Harcourt's Favourite Albums
Wyndham Wallace , March 4th, 2013 06:44

Singer, songwriter, pianist and all-round bon viveur Ed Harcourt talks to Wyndham Wallace about his favourite records

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The Tiny - Close Enough
[Pianist and vocalist] Ellekari Larsson sang on my third album on a song called ‘Loneliness’, and I sang on their album Starring; Someone Like You. I first met them when I was making Strangers. They’re just one of those bands I think should be bigger than they are. That album itself is evocative of a certain time, something I listened to a lot, especially the songs ‘Lake’ and ‘Just Like You’. And the song ‘Second Time Around’: it’s so Swedish. It sounds like Scandinavia. It’s just a cello and pump organ and piano. It just sounds like it was made somewhere that’s very cold: cold and barren and desolate and deserted, but beautiful at the same time. You know, in the middle of the woods in the snow. That’s what it evokes for me. And ‘Second Time Around’, the way the instrumentation is, the cello doing this arpeggiatted thing: it sounds like a crow flying over a frozen lake. It’s very Edgar Allen Poe.

The Swedish have always been very good at writing pop songs. The Tiny aren’t really pop, but they write amazing songs. I’ve always talked about them and want the world to know about them. They’re one of my favourite bands.