Editorial Control

The Editors have been on my mind and in my ears a lot recently. I bought 'The back room' when first released based on very positive reviews, and my usual attention-grabbing keywords (Joy Division, dark, 1980sish) and, not knowing much about them, I loved it. I still remember the soundtrack to Christmas 2005 being 'Munich' playing semi-continuously in my car (it is, after all, a seasonal classic in waiting). This is still the stand-out track from their debut for me, as seen below on Jools Holland:

Obviously, the album really appealed to me, and while Tom Smith's voice certainly had echoes of Ian Curtis, the overall feel to me was individual enough to carve their own niche. Much of the rest of the album was very good, including 'Bullets', seen below:

I guess my enthusiasm (shallowly, I admit) faded slightly when I saw them on TV (never live), as they did seem that little bit too young and clean-cut to match the music; the term Boy Division did resonate with me. I did like a good bit of their next album 'An end has a start', but not as much as 'The back room', and my favourite track from it was 'When anger shows', which has a wonderful epic sweep to it, and sounds much less like JD:

I honestly would admit it was a decision to make as to whether to go for their new album 'In this light and on this evening' (great poetic title, and very Factory-meets-landspace art cover), but I paid my money to Steve Jobs through iTunes and gave it a chance, and it has certainly been a wise investment (the year is getting progressively better for music, after a slow start). I love the new synthesiser direction, and the new debts, obviously to Depeche Mode but also to OMD, especially the start of 'Bricks and mortars' below, which has a great synth build-up worthy of the best of the 1980s:

Of the other tracks, 'The big exit' keeps lodging in my head, especially the intertwining vocal lines at the end of the album version.

This is certainly their best album to date in my humble opinion. I will finish this piece with a comment on their particular gift for interesting cover versions, including REM's 'Orange crush' (below) which I think I first encountered on a Q magazine CD of cover versions of 1980s tracks some years ago:

However, the key discovery for me in doping research for this piece was a jaw-dropping cover version of the amazing Prefab Sprout song 'Bonny', which is off 'Steve McQueen', one of my top 5 albums ever, and which can be seen in a very unusual visual-audio presentation below:

The person who matched the song to a scene from the wonderful 'Control' (suitable for many many reasons) deserves some kind of reward, and Editors overall win even more respect from me for this wonderful version of an already classic song.