Let’s get it out of the way, right from the start: Editors can’t be written off as some simple Joy Division clone. The UK quartet sounds far too much like U2 for that.
Seriously, listening to second album An End Has a Start, you get the sense guitarist Chris Urbanowicz has spent the two years since debut The Back Room was released holed up in his hotel rooms with Boy, October and War on perpetual repeat. At times, his cascading riffs are so familiar, you’ve gotta wonder if frontman Tom Smith accidentally exclaims “This is Red Rocks! This is The Edge!” while the band is performing new tunes “Bones” or “Spiders” during its live shows.
Editors are a lot like Coldplay in their U2 worship—they attempt to push each and every track to epic heights, with sweeping melodies and far-reaching lyrics. But when key moments arrive with mushy payoffs like “Every little piece of your life/Will add up to one/Every little piece of your life/Will it mean something to someone?,” the disc begins to feel like a succession not of near-misses, but of never-even-got-closes.
When Editors keep it relatively simple, as on the hard-charging, head-spinning title cut, they sound like a band with a future. The rest of the time, they sound like they’re trying to recreate someone else’s past.
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Editors
An End Has a Start
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