Music > Album Reviews

Editors - Violence

14/02/18

It’s a long and lonely life, according to Tom Smith in “Cold”, something that may sound a tad ungracious for man that has spent the last fifteen years earning his keep as frontman of the Editors, but then glum introspection is their stock in trade, as this lukewarm opening track of their sixth album, confirms. It’s the first of a mixed bag of treats as, notwithstanding the success of 2015’s “In dreams”, the band continues to fidget and fiddle with just what an Editors song is. Whether this amounts to brave stylistic shifts or crashing gear changes largely depends on the generosity of the listener, but it makes for a curate’s egg of an album.

We are on firmer ground with “Hallelujah” which, despite sounding like a curious mash up of the Klaxons and Midnight Oil, is a belter of a song that is going to be a show stopper played live, while the title track of “Violence” is brim full of sound and fury with its emphatic beat and opaque lyricism and could easily nestle alongside classics off the earlier albums. Thereafter, things go a little off kilter with the insipid stocking filler “Darkness at the Door”, but stick with it and you’ll get to something far more interesting. Despite its nihilistic title, “Nothingness” is best described, oxymoronically, as an Editors dance tune, and a damned fine one at that. With a vocal treatment reminiscent of Neil Hammond and a beat that tips its hat to the Friendly Fires, its infectious rhythm quickly gets under your skin, only to emerge later, unbidden, as an obstinate foot tapping earworm. If this is the new Editors direction, then so be it, but that only begs the question - why wasn’t this the new single? Instead, and inexplicably, it’s “Magazine” that has been placed in the spotlight, a song that lurches from catchy chorus to queasy verse. A serious misfire that logjams the album, I doubt it will do the band any favours.

Thankfully, it’s quickly followed by long time live favourite, “No Sound but the Wind”, finally finding its way onto a studio album. It’s a great song, not least because Smith’s vocal is beautifully judged and, for once, lyrically accessible. While it’s not great news that one of the strongest songs on the album is nearly ten years old, it’s a welcome breather before a further two entries successfully suggest the band has yet more interesting things up their collective sleeves. Helped in no small part by the doomy Fuck Buttons cadences of Benjamin Power, “Counting Spooks” offers rich, almost symphonic, depths as the music meanders is way towards the  haunting (and surely John Murphy inspired) final track, “Beyond”.

Six albums in, and a band should be struggling to choose what to play live – how much of a new album earns that right is surely a sensible test of its lasting success. While nothing is going to shift the magnificence of “Blood,” “Munich” or “Papillon” there’s every reason to imagine “Violence”, “Hallelujah”, and “Belong” joining them in the long game. Add to that a crowd pleasing jump about to “Nothingness” and the welcome return of “No Sound But the Wind” and it’s hard to fault much of this album. It’s just a shame that listening to its content back to back is such bumpy ride.