We were offered a tantalising glimpse of what this album could hold in store when ‘Papillon’ hit the airwaves, the band themselves declaring that they were making an album that would split opinions. They haven’t failed to deliver. Album opener and title track, ‘In This Light and On This Evening’ is certainly a bold choice to kick off proceedings with its repetitive and darkly atmospheric vocals gradually building to an explosion of synths and bass. I have to admit that this song took many, many listens before it started to click and with its simple brooding, despite the endless comparisons, it’s the only moment in three albums worth of material that they’ve actually sounded like Joy Division.
That’s the real trouble with this album. A lot of it takes a while to click and a lot of people won’t have the patience to sit there and listen to it 10, 15, even 20 times. They’ll dismiss it as being crap. However, when Editors get it right they really get it right with ‘Bricks and Mortar’ and ‘You Don’t Know Love’ sitting comfortably alongside the best stuff that they have written. The former is THE Terminator inspired song, its synth line seemingly lifted straight from the film, and is the closest that we get to an anthemic ‘Smokers...’ type song on the album. The latter is the album highlight with a steady build up, complete with ‘ooohs’ and ‘aaahs’, before bringing Tom’s increasingly emotive vocals over a rare example of their signature guitar riffs.
Next comes ‘The Big Exit’, which I would describe as poor, but others have described at brilliant. A further example of opinions being split. After that we have lovely, melodic ‘The Boxer’ and ‘Like Treasure’, which features their most commercially appealing synth hook, after ‘Papillon’. To close the album we are given to vastly different songs. ‘Eat Raw Meat = Blood Drool’ is full of dark energy and is the heaviest we have ever seen Editors whereas the album closer, ‘Walk The Fleet Road’ is a beautiful, layered track; certainly the best album closer we have seen from them so far.
All in all, this could prove to be a pivotal record for them. It’s impossible to predict whether they will lose or gain fans but we see them growing in to themselves both in terms of inhabiting a record and in terms of ambition. We’ll have to wait until the next album to see where all of this takes them.
Posts
