Editors were not the only band suckling on Joy Division's bleak teat in 2005 when they released their debut The Back Room, and they never initially seemed the ones most likely to succeed either. They were like a pencil sketch of gothic depression, too tidy, too clean, too neatly attired to attain any lasting emotional credibility. But there was just one problem with that cursory diagnosis; the incendiary skinny-ribbed barrage of short, sharp, repetitive and achingly insistent singles, titled with an absolute maximum of two syllables as if to ram that point home. There was zero puppy fat on Editors' bones, but what they did carry was toned and worked to perfection. But even considering that discipline, the competent grandeur of its follow up, An End Has a Start, takes you aback. Awash with constellation-scraping omnipresence, opening track "Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors" seems all around you at once, building, lifting and frankly doing a better impression of late 80s U2-sized epic than Coldplay mustered on X&Y. The album rebounds between that sense of rounded, accessible awe and the more industrious pounding in the engine room that they perfected on their debut, the latter particularly demonstrable on the title track and a truly hammering "Escape the Nest". Tom Smith's rudimentary lyrics and forced baritone may lack some of the poetic depth that the music craves, but like their overall style he directs what he does possess with admirable precision. -- James Berry
Editors
An End Has a Start
[Fader; 2007]
Rating: 4.9
Somehow, despite shilling hand-me-down post-punk in platinum-selling quantities to both Europe and the U.S., Birmingham's Editors have kept a low profile throughout indie's revivalist witch hunt. While the mere mention of the Killers, Kaiser Chiefs, or the Bravery incites your average post-punk/New Wave purists to grab their torches and pitchforks (pun intended), Editors' widespread fame and genre piggybacking is often met with a sigh and shrugged shoulders, an odd moment of tolerance and civility amidst the Lord of the Flies behavioral patterns exhibited towards their contemporaries.
So I insert An End Has a Start into my computer, ready to expose their failings to cyberspace, pausing only to giggle at the LP's cornball title, when a funny thing happens: their songs don't totally suck. Like their debut The Back Room, the band's sophomore effort gets good mileage out of worn-out ideas, hoping to fiddle with heartstrings effectively enough to distract listeners from its myriad shortcomings. Frontman Tom Smith still channels Ian Curtis' dour spirit pretty shamelessly, but on songs like "Bones" or the title track he manages the occasional hook to raise up the crumbling wall of sound erected by his bandmates.
A theatrical streak runs through An End, and it's about the only distinguishing quality between their two albums-- a pretty amazing feat considering how bloated Editors already sounded on The Back Room. If Smith could dislodge the frog in his throat, he'd be a dead ringer for Bono on life-affirming motivational numbers like "Push Your Head Towards the Air" and single "Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors", a stark contrast to their more fidgety (and less wordy) previous singles "Bullets" and "Munich".
If only the band could better foster the instrumental bite heard in "Escape the Nest"'s stratospheric guitar riff or the "I Will Follow"-inspired lick that kicks off "Bones", the heaps of sap would be easier to stomach. Instead, Smith's emoting tells but doesn't show, eschewing the impressionism of his favorite bands in favor of protracted ballads and heart-on-sleeve lyrics crammed asses-to-elbows in choruses too small to hold them. On "The Weight of the World", perhaps the album's histrionic pinnacle, Smith resorts to the sort of sweet nothings found in a prom's closing song: "There are tears in my eyes/ Love replaces fear/ Every little piece in your life/ Will add up to one/ Every little piece in your life/ Will mean something to someone."
It's a shame that premature commercial success has sullied Editors' creativity, because An End contains its share of bright spots. However, that "weight" Smith is feeling probably stems from a sudden need to bolster the band's sound proportionately with their massive fame, a move that a group like the Arcade Fire could pull off on a follow-up album, but not a Joy Division/Interpol/U2 cut-and-paste effort like Editors. In a perfect world, these guys would never escape the shadow cast over them by their predecessors, but they could at least do more than compromise them with mass-marketable bombast and arena posturing.
-Adam Moerder, July 18, 2007
http://www.myspace.com/editorsmusic
Review by Margaret Reges
To put it plainly, An End Has a Start doesn't have the electricity of Editors' first effort. And let's face it, The Back Room was a tough act to follow -- it was a damn near perfect debut, delivering a compelling set of cathartic, nocturnal neo-post-punk songs. The problem is not simply that there isn't a track on this release that comes close to the visceral, resonant power of "Bullets." The problem is that there isn't really a memorable moment here, period. And it's a big deal, because it makes Editors, for all their musical prowess, sound practically average. The lead single, "Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors," charges out of the gate with pounding, purposeful drums and surging guitars only to stumble into a muddy, oddly forgettable hook, and "Bones," in spite of its needling momentum and affecting lyrics ("In the end, all you can hope for/Is the love you felt to equal the pain you've gone through...Your face in my hands is everything that I need"), somehow fails to come to a satisfying climax. Editors are reaching for something here, but one gets the sense that they never quite grasp what they're aiming for. The inspiration and exploratory spirit found on the first album are not here; most of the material, albeit well crafted, sounds pretty safe. It's consistently moody, licked throughout with tame fire, at times not entirely unlike (forgive the comparison) something Coldplay might put together in their edgier moments, especially in the case of "Push Your Head Towards the Air" and "Well Worn Hand." Make no mistake: this is a decent album; it bears a craftsman-like solidity and many fans will no doubt be satisfied (and, more than that, happy) with it. But An End Has a Start is simply not the best album Editors are capable of putting together. Hopefully it's just a sophomore slump and not, in fact, the beginning of the end.
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