Editors | Violence

5/10 
Channeling the spirit of Joy Division (and the visuals of Kraftwerk), Editors took their rightful place among the cream of the late 00s new wave revivalists (you know, the ones that are so cool they don’t even need a ‘The’) with first two albums “The Back Room” (2005) and “An End Has a Start” (2007). Laced with darkly anthemic northern hymns, both albums received critical acclaim and turned the Stafford quartet into a stadium favourite – especially in mainland Europe.
While 2009’s “In This Light and on This Evening” did throw up a couple of gems, on the whole it was too far removed from their SOP, with skewed synths replacing guitars and any semblance of melody all too often left out in the clamour to try something more experimental and raw.
2013’s “The Weight of your Love” went some way to navigating the void between old & new, but ultimately drowned itself out with too many self-indulgent power ballads and too much piano. So have they come back to their senses on album number six? In short, not really. Without too many expectations, they’ve walked the middle ground again of “The Weight of your Love”, delivering a compromise between their melodic anthem choruses and Euro-synth sound. When Editors are good they are pretty much spectacular, but when they’re not, well – things just kind of mooch along inoffensively, and such is the case here. “Hallelujah (So Low)” is the loudest thing on the record and almost gets the bones rattling again a la “Sparks”, but things quickly taper off into mediocrity.
Exhibit A is ‘No Sound But The Wind’: a re-worked version of a fan favourite off the soundtrack to that Twilight twaddle in 2010 which curiously become a No.1 single in Belgium. It’s a boring lament to marching on against the odds or whatever, that wouldn’t be out of place coming out of the speakers at TopShop. More promising is the slowly building title track, and super chipper “Darkness at the Door”.
It’s just not up there with the first two LPs (will they ever be again?), but “Violence” does have its moments of loveliness. There’s just not enough of them unfortunately.
Dan Ashcroft
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