REVIEW: Editors

Artist: Editors
Album: An End Has A Start
Plattenspieler Rating: 6.5/10

Refreshingly when they first arrived, Editors had something slightly different to offer from the rest of the chilly post-punk sounds so deeply in vogue. While Interpol likely did exactly what these folks were aiming for with even more startling confidence on Antics, Editors managed to mostly eschew the misarablist ice of Joy Division for the warmer climates of The Chameleons and The The. While still obviously in thrall to Ian Curtis in their pitch black record cover and thumping, Hooky basslines, their existed a hope in their songs that lifted them from the dark of post-punk and further towards the elegiac anti-anthems of early-REM, lacking still the lyrical grace maybe but not lacking the tunes.

Their first album The Back Room, while no masterwork, provided superlative singles in 'Munich' and 'Blood' ("Blood runs through your veins/thats where our similarities end") and pointed the way towards a promising future producing Echo-like glacial singles to live on.

An End Has A Start opens in tubthumping manner with 'Smokers Outside The Hosptial Doors', a confident stride through hammering drums (ever present across the record) and stadium-sized choruses. Any trenchcoated chilliness dissapates for heartfelt sympathy and everyday minutae. Whisper it quietly, but this is very close to what Snow Patrol are doing right now on Grey's Anatomy.

It barely lets up in terms of bombastic eighties guitars and giant drums for the next few tracks and its so far, so last album. When Paul Smith utters "Slow down little one/you can't keep running away", you wish he would take his own advice and give you a let up from this relentless Echo guitars and New Order bass onslaught and try something a little more colourful. And he does on 'Put Your Heads Towards The Air' which again strays slightly into Snow Patrol territory again but don't take this badly, its a genuinely good thing. Editors have a graceful touch, able to retain the smaller emotions even in these huge, built-for-domination tracks. Against that, they sound so much like Interpol here that plagarism is a genuine concern. But then, Editors have never been anything but the sum of their influences.

The most interesting moment of the record comes at its close, the piano-led 'Well Worn Hand' which reveals an open emotion which remains hidden for much of the record. For all the emotive sweep the songs take on, real heart is lacking and it holds back Editors from moving on into that new stratosphere of band. Indeed, just as Interpol streamlined their artier tendencies for Antics, Editors have embraced the anthemists inside and have made an album built for indie consumption in large arenas. Its a simultaneous step forward and back, losing some of the intimacy but gaining a huge audience. Good luck to them, Q Magazine will love it.