Review: Editors - In This Light and On This Evening

Ok, try to picture the scene. You’d burst onto the music scene with your critically acclaimed debut album, you’d then followed that up with a shiny, well-produced second album and now you need to release a third one push up to the next level. What do you do?

Well if you’re in Editors, you break out the synths and release In This Light and On This Evening.

Unfortunately, the 80s revival doesn’t come together quite as well as planned and often lacks the power and melody of previous efforts. Lead guitars are mixed lower, drums are less intense and despite lead singer Tom Smith’s best efforts, the songs are ultimately suffocated by the need for retro sounds.

However, it’s by no stretch a bad album and it’s clear that this a band who aren’t happy to produce the same material over and over. Title track and opener In This Light and On This Evening has an aggressive, almost dirty bass that drives the song and results in what is arguably one of the finest Editors track to date and first single Papillon features an uplifting chorus that could have happily featured on more mainstream second album An End Has A Start.

Other highlights include the industrial darkness of Eat Raw Meat = Blood Drool and album high point Bricks and Mortar, one of the rarer times when the lo-fi sound really gels with the band’s passionate style.

All too often however, In This Light and On This Evening sounds incomplete and feels more like a collection of experimental demos rather than a new direction for the band.
Beneath the layers of retro noise, ballad The Boxer has a real fragility about it that is suffocated by the need for a synth at every opportunity and a lo-fi drum sound that has all the musicality of somebody sneezing.
Similarly, Walk The Fleet Road is overpowered by the use of electronics and although it doesn’t feel as forced as The Boxer, it still sounds muddy and again suffocates Tom Smith’s vocal melody.


Overall In This Light… is an album from a band in transition and is bold step, but ultimately one that doesn’t do the band the justice they perhaps deserve. It has some chilling moments of darkness and Editors should be applauded for pushing themselves and their sound in new places and nearly making it work.
Deep down inside is an impassioned beast waiting to emerge with what this album could have been, had the balance been struck.
Editors will be more successful, that’s for sure, but with In This Light and On This Evening as the necessary stepping stone, true success won’t come until next time around.

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