An End Has A Start

I’m a very happy man. Editors are my favourite band of the last couple of years and, with this their second album, have produced the masterpiece of which I knew they were capable. ‘An End Has A Start’ transcends their debut ‘The Back Room’, in all areas. Building on that solid foundation of songcraft, and using the lessons learnt to explore their abilities and reaching out for new clarity and expression.

Editors announced their arrival on the music scene in 2005 with the maxim “we’re misery on the dancefloor”, and it served them brilliantly. The stream of singles which Kitchenware Records kept unleashing in their concerted effort to put Editors’ name on everybody’s lips, were consistent in that intent. Like the very best dance music, Editors are rhythmically complex yet sublimely simple. Tom Smith’s deadpan yet mournful vocal delivery, using much repeat phrasing so reminiscent of that indie-dance granddaddy, New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’, fuses perfectly with the angular, sustain-drenched guitar lines dripping from Chris Urbanowicz’s black Rickenbacker. Everything else serves to drive home this dancefloor message, and like all the best things of outward immediacy, the true complexity behind this band, the swelling choruses, lyrics full of hope in despair, are there to be discovered when you’re intently listening to it at home and away from the club.

For my money, Editors have the same musical juxtaposition that The Smiths possessed – the inspired fusing of soaringly beautiful guitars and morose lyrical subject matter. But here, Morrissey’s Mancunian matter-of-factness gives way to a searching lyricism that sounds like myth being created before your ears. Here are lyrics that seem so profound they might echo through time, even if you’ve only just heard them. This, to me, is perhaps the single biggest reason this band get compared to Joy Division, because outside of a certain similarity to Ian Curtis’ own faux-monumental wordplay, they share little in common. The overall sound is very different, with the sparse claustrophobia of Martin Hannett’s production eclipsed by the overwhelming sound we have here. Where Joy Division were emasculated urban alienation, Editors are entirely at home, gushing with all the emotions of 2007 in every chorus.

Here is truly a band who not only how to write a chorus but show it off too. The skill of arrangement these days often seems like a lost art, the MTV-friendly loud/soft aesthetic being all-pervasive since ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ ruled everything. Instead, here is a band who, with producer Jacknife Lee, sculpt songs with swelling reverb fields of guitars or bass, judicious use of multitrack dubbing or, when required, simple silence. Even the gap between songs sounds measured and intentional.



Above: Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors

The drumming on this album deserves a new paragraph. It’s like this all too easily ignored instrument goes through a journey on each song, building from gently tom-tom pattering to some of the most urgent, driving drumming I’ve heard for years. We might journey from crisp precise Bloc Party-esque beats to a spacious wash to match the build-up of the guitar parts. This is an epic record, with the entire band playing equal parts and the drummer no less equal.

In recent interviews, the band themselves were talking along much the same lines. The debut album had the songs, but this time they’ve managed to somehow bottle more of their incandescent live feel and that unique sculpted wall of sound they project. They sound like they enjoyed every second of making it too – the bastards.

Editors Website
Editors Myspace

Words by Charlie at Left Legged Pineapple