Gig played on 10/08/05

The words "record producer" conjure an image of a fat, middle-aged man with a ponytail, prone to saying things like: "This isn't sounding brown enough." Consequently, it's only when things go wrong that you realise their value.

Birmingham gloom-rock quartet Editors provide a case in point. Go see them live and you'll likely be overwhelmed by their passion, their urgency, the raw excitement infusing their brand of noise. Above all, you'll be struck by the extravagance of Chris Urbanowicz's talents: his Rickenbacker guitar guides every Editors song and sounds as often like a police siren or piece of industrial drilling equipment as anything you'll hear on those in-vogue neo-Britpop records.

Listen only to the Editors' debut album "The Back Room", however, and you might mark them down as only-slightly-above-average indie troubadours. See, where the Editors' live sound is taut and vicious, their record comes off slightly flat, and we're pointing the finger of blame for that at producer Jim Abbiss, a man far better suited to working with bombastic bands like The Music and (*chokes back vomit*) Kasabian.

Thankfully, Mr Abbis is not manning the sound desk tonight; and it's quite staggering how potent and vital Editors sound. Opener "Someone Says" perfectly illustrates the gulf between their live and recorded incarnations: when Urbanowicz unleashes its descending riff, the song's inherent menace and paranoia are amplified to undreamed-of levels.

"Someone Says" gives way to a whipcrack-tight journey through "The Back Room" that confirms said album's problems to lie in sonics rather than songwriting. As the singles "Bullets", "Blood" and "Munich" bring the Scala to its knees, Tom Smith suddenly starts to command as much attention as Urbanowicz, largely because he sings lines so extraordinarily arresting they almost bear comparison with Ian Curtis'. "Munich", for example, sucks the air from your lungs with the observation that "people are fragile things... Be careful what you put them through."

But as the set builds to a dizzying crescendo, with the outrageously epic "Open Your Arms" teeing-up an encore that pairs secret weapon "You Are Fading" (a mere b-side) with a tender "Fingers In The Factories", Urbanowicz again emerges as the band's talisman. Incidentally, we hear his backstage chat-up line runs thus: "Nobody ever compliments me on my guitar-playing; they just say they wanna f*ck me." Must be a hard life.

Conclusion? Editors rule. They just need someone to record them properly.

by Niall O'Keeffe