Editors - The Weight of Your Love

by Cila Warncke

published: 15 / 8 / 2013

Label: Play It Again Sam
Format: CD

intro

Anthemic fourth album from Editors, which takes a rip-roaring but unflinchingly raw and intense look at an emotionally devastating love affair

On fourth album ‘The Weight of Your Love’ Editors’ frontman Tom Smith is a man being crushed to death – and relishing every agonising moment. Where, in the past, the band dealt with love, its vagaries and illusions, in relatively straightforward fashion (albeit with a persistent slant towards exploring the shadow side of desire) the new album, which was recorded mostly live, eschews easy abstractions and rips into the raw, blood-bearing heart of an emotional state so complex and terrifying most rock songs end before it begins Opener ‘The Weight’ sets the tone, with Smith confessing: “Every day I pray/ I’m the first to go/ without you I would be lost.” This isn’t, as Pulp once put it, chocolate boxes and flowers but “something darker/like a small animal that only comes out at night”. This is love at its ripest; so full and rich that anyone with imagination knows it can only decay. “I promised myself I wouldn’t sing about death/ I know that I’m getting boring.” But, like a mother creeping out of bed to watch her sleeping baby breathe, Smith can’t help himself. Editors have always had a lyrical fascination with human frailty, as evidenced in the darkly observational ‘Smokers Outside the Hospital’, and on this record it evolves into an intense, near-obsession with the fragility of the flesh that holds such overwhelming emotions: “I’m just a lump of meat with a heartbeat,” Smith declares in ‘The Weight’. Paradoxically, this trembling fixation with death is set to the Editors’ boldest, most bombastic tunes to date. Album highlight ‘Formaldehyde’ boasts a soaring chorus that has Saturday night, Glastonbury Pyramid Stage sing-along written all over it. But the 150,000-strong crowd will be belting out the rather plaintive line: “the tissue and bone I have on loan/Aches to be near you.” On ‘A Ton of Love’ Smith chides himself to “be thankful for what you’ve got” over a driving guitar rhythm that evokes ‘Rattle and Hum’-era U2, and the falsetto lament ‘What is this Thing Called Love’ is a nod to the Irish outfit circa ‘How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.’ Fans of Editors lean, angular early albums may need time to adjust to the lighters-aloft moments, but anyone who’s listened closely cannot be surprised. Smith has always given the impression of being a man struggling to contain cataclysms of emotion and it is marvellous to hear him – and the band – let loose.

Track Listing:-

1 The Weight
2 Sugar
3 A Ton Of Love
4 What Is This Thing Called Love
5 Honesty
6 Nothing
7 Formaldehyde
8 Hyena
9 Two Hearted Spider
10 The Phone Book
11 Bird Of Prey

Band Links:-

http://www.editorsofficial.com/
https://www.facebook.com/editorsmusic
https://twitter.com/editorsofficial
https://www.youtube.com/user/editorsofficial
https://instagram.com/editorsofficial/

Label Links:-

https://twitter.com/piasrecordings
https://www.facebook.com/playitweb
http://www.playitagainsam.net/
https://www.youtube.com/user/playitweb

interviews

Interview (2013)

Editors bassist Russell Leetch talks to Richard Lewis about the band’s return with new album ‘The Weight of Your Love’, their first in four years which saw the group working with film composer Clint Mansell