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2007-11-20
Espacio Movistar (Wintercase Festival)
Editors literally fire themselves onto the stage and when I say literally I am of course talking metaphorically. No, of course there are no stadium friendly pyrotechnics tonight but there is a power of performance on display that can make you feel privileged just to witness.
They may look fairly clean cut and perhaps a little more public-school than you’d hope a rock band too, but there are few bands today with such apparent passion and belief in their own sound. Songs like “Bullets,” “Lights,” and “All Sparks” do the impossible and get the notoriously sedate Catalan crowd at the very least nodding their heads and some to even jump about. But it’s their already classic track “Munich,” easily one of my favourite songs of the last few years, that really does the job and makes the audience erupt.
Whilst I find material off their second album “An End Has a Start” to be a little wordy and overly melancholic, Editors come across as something of a rarity in today’s rock scene, perhaps comparable to Arcade Fire, as a band who really know what they are doing and have something to say. The one down side is that, after repeat viewings, it is harder to believe in the sincerity of this passion when on display in the rather sanitised corporate space of the Espacio Movistar.
For a band that is so identified with the brit-indie scene, Editors don’t really fit the model of the stereotypical shoe-gazers. Their music with its often morose, enigmatic and dark lyrics, even more so on their sophomore effort and especially when heard in the context of their angry performance style, skirts closer to goth-rock than arena filling anthemic. The intensity of their live act, with singer Tom Smith’s trademark frantic thrashing of his guitar, underlies a tightness that gives their sound a dance music like edge. All of this combined suggests that they are a truly uncategorisable band who are doing something worth paying attention to.
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