Editors - The Weight of Your Love

  by Cila Warncke

published: 15 / 8 / 2013

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Review

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/editorsof
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