Editors live!

Editors
Park West, Chicago
Tuesday, September 11, 2007

The sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and English post punk quartet Editors have little in common other than the band’s scheduled performance Tuesday night at Park West. The band weren’t even a twinkle in NME’s eye in 2001 and deal almost exclusively in personal politics.

Yet bathed in icy rays of light, frontman Tom Smith constantly invoked one word: “down.” “Fall down to my knees,” he bellowed on “The Racing Rats.” “Look up/long way down,” observed “Open Your Arms.” He echoed “always let you down,” “pull the blindfold down,” and he closed with “no one left to fear as the sun goes down.” Again, it’s out of context, but if anyone ever needs the crushing reminder that everyone dies someday, Mr. Smith is your man.

As he explains in IE‘s September issue, Editors’ latest album, An End Has A Start (Epic), is about dealing with death. But instead of letting this chew up the performance, the Birmingham-based act were an alternately ferocious and chillingly professional live beast in a stopwatch-quick concert.

The menacing title track opened with a heartbeat drumkick that transformed into a piano-backed disco-punk stomp for “Racing Rats,” with Smith unsure whether he should discard his bench (he didn’t). It produced a difficult segue into the cinematic “The Weight Of The World,” which couldn’t quite breathe enough to muster its recorded grandeur. The whole time Editors felt somewhat restrained by guitarist Chris Urbanowicz’s persistent forays into tremolo-picked, upper-register runs. Like an easily scared air-raid-siren manager, his overuse muted any effectiveness.

Smith, however, became more electric and willed the set into its stride, building “You Are Fading” into a cauldron-like crescendo and capping the show off with searing renditions of “Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors” and “Fingers In The Factories.” What goes down must come . . . up?

— Steve Forstneger

Category: Live Reviews, Weekly