Editors’ sound has been compared to Echo & the Bunnymen, Joy Division, Interpol and U2. We heard all of it when they played to a sold-out crowd at den Atelier on Saturday, plus echoes of Depeche Mode, The Killers and even Lykke Li. (Listen to ‘A Ton of Love’ and ‘I Follow Rivers’ and tell us they don’t have something in common.)
How does a band that sounds a little bit like a lot of things figure out how to sound like themselves? In the case of Editors, it’s through tight instrumental performances grounded by lead singer Tom Smith’s vocals, which bring warmth, steadiness and an occasionally folksy feel to the band’s melancholy melodies and propulsive rhythms, making them sound at times like the long-lost British cousins of the contemporary Americana movement.
For the last show on their European tour, Editors treated the crowd to a long set – 19 songs, followed by a three-song encore – and we were surprised to hear ‘Munich’, their most popular song to date, two-thirds of the way through (check out an episode of Song 2 dedicated to that track here). To our delight (and the crowd’s apparent confusion), they closed the show with two quieter tracks off their 2013 album, The Weight of Your Love, and ended with ‘Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors’, a five-minute meditation on how life ruins us and death comes for us all. No wonder American alt-rock gods REM are fans.
Editors are comprised of Tom Smith (lead vocals, guitar, piano), Russell Leetch (bass guitar, synthesizer, backing vocals), Ed Lay (drums, percussion, backing vocals), Justin Lockey (lead guitar) and Elliott Williams (keys, synthesizers, guitars, and backing vocals), with Benjamin John Power joining as composer and producer for their most recent album, 2022’s EBM. Today Radio’s Sam Steen spoke with drummer Ed about the Blanck Mass-produced album when it debuted – that interview is available on RTL Play.
What’s next for Editors? Later this month they’re off to Paaspop in Schinjndel, where they’ll be headlining the Netherlands’ first festival of the season alongside trance king Tiesto, drum & bass duo Chase and Status, and British pop-rockers Only the Poets, whom I spoke with when they played den Atelier last month. Also on the programme: Swedish dance chanteuse Zara Laarsson and British punk band Bad Nerves, just off their second tour with fellow Essex rockers Nothing But Thieves. (I spoke with NBT vocalist Conor Mason when they played Lux last year – we get around almost as much as the artists themselves.) Later this summer they’ll be playing festivals in Spain and France.
We’re not sure when they’ll be back in the Grand Duchy – or when their heaving fanbase will outgrow Atelier (there’s an argument that it already has) – but we’ll be there at doors for a front-row seat to some of the best rock around.
