Digging out some golden oldies

Birmingham band Editors are delving into their back catalogue for their upcoming tour. DAVID VINCENT reports

IN keeping with their recent ‘best of’ compilation, Black Gold, Editors’ latest set-list sees the Birmingham band delve back into the far reaches of their lengthy career, to breathe new life into the tracks not played for years. “As a band, we’ve never really shied away from our singles, we’ve always played [early releases] Munich and Bullets and things like that, and obviously on this tour we still are,” reports frontman Tom Smith. “But this time there are some songs that we’d stopped playing so much.

“Over the last five to six years the tours have focused on the new records. So with this tour we said, let’s go back and play Bones, Escape The Nest [from second album, An

End Has A Start], and Fingers In The Factories [from debut, The Back Room].

Coming together in the early 2000s, Editors earned their reputation playing explosive shows at such venues as Moseley’s Jug Of Ale and the recently closed Flapper. Their debut album, 2005’s The Back Room, thrust the then quartet into the

Editors

limelight. Award nominations and number one albums followed.

The departure of guitarist Chris Urbanowicz could have derailed them, but Tom, bassist Russell Leetch and percussionist Edward Lay continued, bringing in Justin Lockey (from YourCodeNameIs:Milo) and Elliott Williams (from Mancunian indie outfit Airship), signing a new record deal, and scoring another Top 10 success with fourth album The Weight Of Your Love. Further albums Successors In Dream (2015) and Violence (2018) have continued their Top 10 run.

Released at the end of last year, the 16-track Black Gold covers Editors’ entire six-album career, and features three new numbers: the title track, Upside Down and Frankenstein.

“The songs are connected, I feel, quite exaggerated, quite over the top, quite cartoonish,” reckons Tom, of the trio of tunes which came together in the wake of touring Violence, and were recorded in the US with An End

Has A Start producer Jacknife Lee.

“It was nice to go and work with Jacknife Lee again as we have history with him,” says Tom. “We were in California, in his studio, and it was a lot of fun. It was a playful recording session, and that seemed to suit these playful, over the top, Editors songs we had.”

Of the three, perhaps Frankenstein is the most surprising, a track that’s already become a firm live favourite, concluding their festival set-list. “That’s very melodic for us, poppy, for want of a better word,” says Tom. “It’s us trying to be immediate.”

Could it signal the direction of Editors’ seventh album, perhaps? Can we expect the next LP to be less dark, and more upbeat?

“We tend to react to the record we made previously and quite often go in a different direction. So I don’t know man!” says Tom. “There seems to be a lot of rock music played in the dressing room at the moment… so who knows?”

EDITORS play Arena Birmingham on Thursday, February 27.