Editors - An End Has A Start LP (Kitchenware)
5/5
By: Alex Lee Thomson
If Ian Curtis was still alive he'd no doubt be a fan of this band, if not for the bleak lyrics and forceful guitars, for the way it's all hidden behind a veil of catchy, soaring pop melody. 'The Back Room' was an astounding debut, and when interviewing the Midlanders last year this humble Rockfeedbacker meekly asked, "where do you go from here?" to which they simply answered, "we're going to make all the big bits bigger and all the small bits smaller". Such a straightforward concept and one that excited me to the point of uncontainable impatience until finally a copy of their new album landed at my door... and, well...
If their goal was to amplify the big bits, 'An End Has A Start' is the realisation of a completed undertaking. From the offset this album blares through your speakers unremittingly with a ruthless drive of prevailing guitars, colossal drums and vocals that make you tense your face and shake your body in disorder. In just one song they outdistance the whole of 'Back Room' and manage to condemn the likes of 'Blood' and 'Munich' to inferiority. 'Smokers Outside The Hospital Door' is a beautifully evocative and governing song that blurs the usual Editors verse; dark by reputation, with a diverse structure that fascinates the listener and demands utter attention. While you know it's the banging percussion that sets it on fire, it's Tom's vocal exhibition that gives it durability, meaning no matter how many times you hear it, it will always sound significant. It still sounds like Editors, they've not thrown away their identity (cough, cough, The Killers), but they've evolved in the way any talented band should between albums. It's still them, sounding enough like their debut to keep you content, but have pushed themselves beyond what they could have done two years ago allowing new dynamics and ideas to circulate the never-ending pummel of towering reverberations. Every Editors fan will like this, we can say that and know it to be true as it's a perfect second album in every achievable way... a feat which is ruddy hard to pull off.
The albums namesake track begins with the trademark Editors guitars, the slightly high-pitched twinge reminding you of 'Sparks', and kicks in to rapidly reveal a lashing tune that almost erratically roams out of control and would stand out as a single if it wasn't for the fact it's too much like their previous successes. It takes 'The Weight Of The World' to showcase Tom's voice properly and illustrate how much the band have developed, and it's the emergence of this one which really starts to eject the album from the shadows of back rooms and ex-images. You can't get over how crushingly this guy can sing... and we can't say it enough. Tom Smith genuinely has one the most haunting and unique voices in modern music and on more measured, profounder tracks like 'Push Your Head Towards The Air' and even more so on 'Well Worn Hand' you cant escape his pull as a songster. The latter of these tracks is possibly among the greatest epic-anti-ballads in existence and when he sorrowfully sprains out the lines, "I don't want to go out on my own anymore, I can't face the night like I used to before, I'm so sorry for the things that they've done, I'm so sorry for what we've all become", you'd rather nobody spoke to you for a bit. His words read like a howling suicide note, scrawled by a slapdash biro and stained in forgotten tears of a forgotten youth. The first album was about guitars, large and battering, but this album is about Tom and what he's got to say. You could really take away all the music, leaving maybe just the odd subterranean piano note, and it would still work with his voice alone carrying it across the great divide and up to wherever Curtis is resting his perpetual heart.
If you did take away the compositions though you wouldn't get the elations of 'The Racing Rats' and 'Escape The Nest' both of which push a thumping drum through the surface of the Earth leaving epic craters in their wake. We have to mention again that it's the voice, more angry on these, that takes a hold of what could be very ordinary songs and turn them into masterpieces, relished in genii. The size of these two tracks blow 'Blood' to pieces and reveal the meaning behind Editors purpose as a band, their reason for doing what they do and why we need them in our lives... which we do. The best point of this album, the utmost peak of exuberance that we're pushed to, the tightest moment and the second we shiver with excitement, goosebumps risen, happens exactly 83 seconds into 'Escape The Nest'. All the best things about the band and this album fall together and rise higher than any other song this scanty 'feedbacker has heard all year, including Arcade Fire and Bloc Party. Imagine if Coldplay were great, imagine if U2 weren't so flashy and imagine if Joy Division and New Order really were the same band... I'm liking it that much. Derren Brown on his best day couldn't capture you the way this song, and collectively the album, does. It draws your head and heart in chorus while ripping your ears to shreds. It bleeds through your walls, grabs you from behind and demands admiration, conquering your CD collection and messing with your little thoughts and dreams of self-stardom certifying an ear-gasm. The lyrics may be the most depressing around but the obliteration of sound and escapism of voice mangle into the bottomless freefall of brilliance that combine these unworkable blocks into tools of unbelievable song-making and put Editors on our wish list of people we definitely want to hook up with in the afterlife.
This is confidently the best album of 2007, through these weeping eyes anyway, and with so much still to play with the real anticipation comes from knowing there's still more to come from a band that appear to have had sex with the devil and come out of it with a disquieting faculty for touching people.
Stream 'Smokers Outside the Hospital' from 'An End Has A Start' HERE.
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