Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 25/07/05
Label: Kitchenware

If Editors are at all dismayed by the reaction they're getting from some quarters, they have a lot to learn. If the band are shocked by the cells their image has had them locked into, before the last note on their debut was even recorded, they must be stupid. However, the one thing they should have no fear of is the quality of their debut. "The Back Room" is, principally, a triumph.

For those petrified souls who crawled from underneath their beds at the prospect of four oil slick cool New Yorkers striding into view in strobes of black and red light three years ago, this is certainly something to celebrate. The parallels to Interpol are undeniable. Elsewhere, this is a group who may not have literally studied 'the 80s classics' but are inevitably, impossibly cast in the same monochrome light and dark visions of sinister horror in alleyways as Joy Division, blah blah blah, military U2, a bash of Echo & The Bunnymen, Christ, there's Ian Curtis reborn etc etc.

Sorry, for a minute there I lost myself. With that treacle waded through, it's onto the record. Anyone with a vague grasp on guitar music in the 21st century must have expected promising things of Editors, judging by the trio of singles that preceded "The Back Room". Few bands have emerged from provincial hell kicking and screaming with a statement as deranged or desperate as "you don't need this disease" or a guitarist capable of such a raging clang as that on "Bullets". "Blood" uses its lifeforce crux - "blood runs through our veins, that's where our similarity ends" - to emphasise the band's all-consuming invitation to the outsider, whilst "Munich" crashes emphatically beyond the inevitable Germanic signposts in a divebombing blaze of Spitfire sparks.

Elsewhere, the album is bolted together by two epic examples of Editors' distraught but anthemic raging glory. "Camera" is stretched-out like elastic, before the incessant high-hat and twisted guitar skronk finally snap into a hymnal keyboard line and an unholy crescendo. "Open Your Arms" is no less mighty, a brooding then brilliant menace of a song but also the most profound and compelling reason to enter this cloaked, dark fist of a world.

And yes, throughout the LP, Editors are 'guilty'. Black and white are the only colours before your eyes and a cold, distaneful resigned emotion dominates. Frontman Tom Smith does possess something of the Ian Curtis spasm, proffering his desolation within seconds of the record opening - "If fortune favours the brave, I am as poor as they come". Wrecking guitars maraude across the songs in a Daniel Kessler/Edge axe-off, drums become robotic, mechanoid pistons, celestial Kraftwerk synths sweep alongside Hookyesque roving bass runs. But so what?

"Open your arms and welcome…" invites Smith towards the close of "The Back Room". It could be the best offer you get for a while.

    by Ben Gilbert