Editors are totally ridiculous. The band’s style is gaudier than a New Orleans bordello managed by Baz Luhrmann. Everything they do is so overwrought, so over the top, you can’t help but marvel at the audacity.
Take Hallelujah (So Low), from their sixth album, Violence. The track welds together tech-noir electronics, fiercely strummed acoustic guitars, swooning vocal lines and sludgy riffs big enough to have emanated from the flame-throwing instrument of the masked militia in Mad Max. Maybe Editors are the only group in the world that could make all this insanity work.
There are moments when the Birmingham band fly too close to the sun. The final minute of album opener Cold features a shrieking guitar line that wraps around the brain like cheese wire. But that's the kind of high-stakes game Editors play on Violence.
The payoff comes on songs such as the title track, a 1980s-style synth-popper that sees singer Tom Smith – whose dramatic style has all the subtlety of a Tommy Wiseau monologue – deliver enjoyably garish lines like, “One more wasted digging holes/Down where the streets are paved with souls.”
If this sounds too much for you, you're probably a normal person. This is a work that's twisted and glorious. A Gothic monster movie captured on wax – music akin to Victor Frankenstein firing volts into a festering corpse. Run towards it or run away. Either way, waste no time. editorsofficial.com
