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Ed Harcourt: Hope For Hopeless Romantics

It's no secret that brains and hearts speak vastly different languages, but British singer Ed Harcourt is conversant in both. "Haywired," from his stellar new album Lustre, finds him sounding perfectly suited to the swooning, swooping sound of falling in love.

Soaring one minute, gravelly and confused the next, Harcourt's voice always sounds infused with wonder: He makes sense of love intellectually without losing track of its vulnerable emotional core. It's a delicate balancing act, but Harcourt works like a skilled surgeon. As "Haywired" builds and fades with a repeated mantra of "It's not easy to be happy / Get away with it," the song lands on a sentiment potent enough to give hope to hopeless romantics.

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Barbara Mitchell