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As the endless line in Joy Division wannabes continues to wind on, Editors emerge as the latest band to deal out slices of dark pop filled with shimmering guitar lines and dryly intoned vocal deliveries.
To be fair, Editors do add enough of their own personality to proceedings to ensure they rise above much of the lesser efforts doing the rounds at the moment and it's the trump card of quality songwriting that really marks them out as a cut above.
You don't have to look much further than recent single BLOOD to hear this band firing on all cylinders, a massive pop song that towers behind it's darker leanings and with it's "blood runs through your veins / that's where our similarity ends" chorus proving one of the pithiest putdowns of the year so far.
It's with similar style that MUNICH presents itself, another intricate combination of catchy songwriting and twitchy guitar work - kind of like Franz Ferdinand locked in a dark basement and force fed Joy Division and The Cure. The more atmospheric and subtler strains of FALL point towards bolder aspirations, a slow releasing song that offers gradual build ups to its epic rock highs - the skeletal guitar excursions bristling with the kind of pent up tension Mogwai do so well.

The likes of CAMERA also piles on the atmospheric tension, a song that conjures up images of crumbling gothic architecture and moonlit decay and while the vocals still echo Ian Curtis too eerily at times you can at least see Editors attempting to forge out their own identity.
The more wired and twitchy sounds they employ on songs like FINGERS IN THE FACTORIES and ALL SPARKS come on like The Cure at their poppiest channelling the Gang Of Four at their most angular, twitchy guitar lurches coupled with catchy melodicism and a healthy injection of humanity.
BULLETS sees them at their radio friendliest yet, an instantly accessible pop song that echoes the indie pop glories of recent bands like Maximo Park, The Futureheads and Franz Ferdinand - exploding into its incessantly infectious choruses while riding waves of shimmering guitar noise.

While appearing to arrive at the back end of a string of bands dealing in the same set of influences and sounds, Editors in fact sound more fully formed and far reaching than you might expect. Sure, you get traces of Interpol here and there and The Departure may have released their album first, but Editors manage to do things with just that extra bit of style and grace - their slower burning moments resonating with a touch more grandeur and their harder hitting side that little bit more punchier and to the point. THE BACK ROOM suggests that Editors are a band with the vision to truly excel, and as a debut album is about as strong a statement of intent as you could hope for.

The four members of EDITORS are the first to admit that they are not from the rock ‘n’ roll centres of the UK. Vocalist Tom Smith is from Stroud, guitarist Chris Urbanowicz is from Nottingham whilst drummer Ed Lay is from Ipswich and bass player Russell Leetch the only near Brummie, hails from Solihull. It may be this geographical grounding that leads the band to suggest that “rock ‘n’ roll doesn’t really follow us around” but recent events have suggested that this pattern is changing. Things were set in motion when Ed became the last member on board a previous incarnation of the band and EDITORS were born. Having founded the band at University in Stafford, on graduation the four relocated to Birmingham as it was both the nearest big city and the home of their management. The first sign was a deal with rejuvenated independent Kitchenware, in the teeth of offers from bigger labels, at the close of 2004. For the band this was a very conscious decision, eschewing the immediate appeal of bigger advances for the care, attention and freedom offered by the independent. The first fruit of the Kitchenware deal was debut, limited single, “Bullets” in January of this year. Sold out within two days of it’s release, “Bullets” established Editors in one short, three minute burst and second single, “Munich” shot into the 20 and propelled the band on to the stage for MTV’s Spanking New Music Week alongside the airwaves of Radio 6, Radio One and Xfm and the pages of NME, The Fly and The Sunday Times Culture, who opined:
“Munich packs more urgency, passion, hooks and power into its short life than many bands manage over a whole album”
With live shows on their debut tour and a subsequent, enlarged second headline tour selling out as much by word of mouth as media attention, Editors are now poised to release their genuinely highly anticipated debut album, “The Back Room” on July 25th. Crafted by the band with “Fifth Editor”, Jim Abbiss at Chapel Studios in Lincoln, the album will further enhance the band’s swelling ranks of fans with familiar live tracks alongside some new ones that have allowed the band to stretch their wings a little. “Camera” sees the band deliver an electronic elegy which may surprise some of those familiar to the sheer attack of their live shows whilst “Distance” closes the album with a stark beauty that is both uplifting and other worldly. Amongst live favourites such as forthcoming single “Blood” and set opener “Someone Says” lies “All Sparks”, the last track to be written for the album and a perfect encapsulation of what the band term their “Dark Disco”. With dream shows at Glastonbury, the Eden Project and Reading and Leeds over the summer and their largest headline tour to date to be announced, EDITORS time is come. Praise also comes from their contemporaries with Guy Garvey and Craig Potter of Elbow taking production duties on a new B side after a mutual friend passed on a copy of “Munich” that found much favour in the Elbow camp. As evidenced by their forum, where the ‘original’ fans have already set up their own section and the continued £30 plus price of a “Bullets” 7” on Ebay, the facts are unmistakable, this is a band that are very much at the beginning of a great rock ‘n’ roll story of their own. It may be that rock ‘n’ roll is soon following Editors around, the Back Room boys are set for the limelight.

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