Sunday, 7 January 2024

The Archive Index

"Don't let it get lost..."

Welcome to the Lemming Archive.

What you'll find here is everything that I have ferociously, and often indiscriminately collected by the UK band Editors since I first became a fan in 2006. There's no officially released material here as it's not my intention to take money out of anybody's pocket. What it does contain are live shows, interviews, television appearances and some other memorabilia that isn't quite as easy to categorise (Editors condom tin, anyone?). The whole idea in setting this blog up was to assemble everything in one place so that other Editors fans would be able to delve into the band's history, as well as catching up with their current activities. The links below will help you do that.

Whether you've been an Editors fan for a while or you've only just discovered them, I'm really glad you're here. Have a look around and take whatever you want, support the band and most importantly of all enjoy the music ;)

The Lemming Archive - Table of Contents
For hidden extras, scroll down to "Covert Shares"

Editors in 2003 (as Snowfield)

 
 


 

 

Notifications and updates *new*


The Lemming Archive (main blog)
 

The Archive on YouTube (for all hosted videos)

 

Editors' online message board

 

The Lemming Archive's email address
 

brought to you with lots and lots of lemming-love :) x

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Sunday, 31 December 2023

Tom plays Munich - 13th July 2025


If the recent past has taught us anything, it's that Tom tends to post these videos when other things are going down, or are about to. There's some intimate tour dates on the way this week, and this month is also the 20th anniversary of The Back Room being released. 

As part of a record that served as a first "Hello" from Editors to the World, and a test to see if they could capture and translate what they were capable of live into a long form studio artefact, Munich was a song that really connected. It will forever be jokingly referred to as "The Hit" and continues to be a staple of Editors' live set whenever they play.  I don't think that it's quite the essential supporting structure to the band that it once was, their catalogue has lots of strong alternatives now, but you can't deny the fondness it evokes when it's played. People loved Munich, and rightly so.  

It was not about the German city, and it was not about Munich the cat that lived in their manager's house and used to pee on everything when they slept there. The apparently blatant meaning of "people are fragile things..." seemed to concern the universality of human frailty, even though it was actually written about the feeling associated with being hungover. 

This is Tom in the middle of an English heatwave giving us an acoustic run through of The Hit. Given his tendencies to occupy the darker corners of music, I'm amazed he got to the end of the track without melting into a slick pool of mournful goo. 

Enjoy the music ;)



brought to you with lots and lots of lemming-love ;) 
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Tom's solo tour news

 


The address for the mailing list is below, I'll publish all the dates here too once they're announced.


brought to you with lots and lots of lemming-love ;) x
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Editors Instagram - June 2025



So. What happened in June? Well, Editors are still in the studio as part of their rehearsal/writing sessions for their 8th album.  Elliott played a DJ set at Glastonbury this year. Let's see...was there anything else? Anything at all?

Oh, wait.

Tom released details of his own dedicated mailing list. It said:-

"There is exciting news coming from Tom very soon!

To be amongst the first to hear all the details sign up for Tom's new mailing list HERE.

By signing up you'll be the first to know about new music, tours, merch and more. PLUS! You'll receive all sorts of exclusive subscriber content. Exciting times ahead! "

Next came the beginning of a run of acoustic performances, that kicked off with An End Has a Start and then The Phone Book. These weren't full renditions, just samples. Most interesting what went down on the 16th of June. Tom posted a one minute film depicting a field swaying in the breeze with some music playing over it. There was a trumpet. Curious. Next came a message from him via his new mailing list.




If you want to hear what he had to say in the video, go here. All of this, however, was merely preliminary entertainment for the announcement on the 20th of June that Lights of New York City was Tom Smith's first solo release. That same day he put an acoustic take of the song onto social media,  and PIAS gave us a short film about how the song was recorded. 

2 more acoustic videos followed, they were Lights, and then What is This Thing Called Love. 

In summary, Tom is now a legitimate recording artist, after over 20 years as an Editor and there's an album coming soon. This is occurring in tandem with the construction of new Editors recordings so there's lots of exciting things happening. Come on, July. Show us what you got... 

Editors Instagram - June 2025

For all of Editors' other Instagram posts, go here.

brought to you with lots and lots of lemming-love :) x 
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Tom Smith - Life is for Living (detail) July 2nd 2025

 


Oh this teasing. 

Posted online this very afternoon, here's 35 seconds of what could be a brand new song by Tom, tentatively titled Life is For Living.  The infusion rate for this supply of new music is set to slow right now, but I would guess that will be changing very soon...

Enjoy the music ;)


brought to you with lots and lots of lemming-love ;) x

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50 Years of Rock Werchter 2025

 


This comes courtesy of the lady who was so obsessed with Editors, she built their nomadic online tribe a home after they lost their original dwelling. Thanks Hannah ;) This was tried as an upload to YouTube and was immediately nuked for copyright, so it's being made available as a download instead. 

This is a video of two parts, and of two separate subjects. One is the story of a chance connection between audience and band, which was facilitated by Jason getting lost in a moment in 2010 (see above), the other is about redemption from the edge of disaster two years later. This is six minutes of Tom reflecting on what went down those years at Werchter, but really even this short film doesn't do the story justice.  Here's some other links here at the Archive which flesh out the details to give anyone unfamiliar a better understanding. 


50 Years of Rock Werchter Featurette

brought to you with lots and lots of lemming-love ;) x
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Tom Smith - What is This Thing Called Love 30th June 2025

 



Here's Tom rounding off the month that he confirmed his intentions to release his music more directly, without first having fed it through the process that transforms it into Editors songs. This is an acoustic version of What is This thing Called Love, a track that Tom wrote to prove to himself that he was capable of constructing a ballad for musical talent shows like X-Factor.  There's a connection between Tom operating as a solo songwriter now and when we initially heard this, back in 2012 as part of PIAS Nites. 

Back then, he very much still within the wreckage of the original lineup of his band. Chris' exit hadn't been announced yet, that would come a couple of months later, but you have to guess that at that stage he would have been in prolonged contemplation about the two choices that presented themselves. There would either be nothing, or there would be a pursuit of a markedly different future. We know from interviews around the time of the promotional cycle around The Weight of Your Love album that he had considered retiring Editors as a band entirely.  Could PIAS Nites 2012  have been the first, cautious steps of assessing just what it would like to bear the responsibilities of being a performer solely on his own merits?  

Which brings us to 2025, where Tom has actually declared that as his intention, even though the safety net of Editors has been comfortingly asserted as remaining in place. Within the boundaries of that, he's posted this version of WITTCL and it's very different to the original.  The studio take was a real tester for his falsetto, but not this time around. The music also possessed a measure of grandiosity, with the Bond movie strings sweeping all across it. Here's what he said in a press release recently:-

“Artistically, I realised I wanted to do something which was a purer representation of the songs I write, in the style I always have, on an acoustic guitar or a piano, presented simply."

Which is exactly what this is. Strangely, it's almost his normal songwriting process but in reverse. He's taken an Editors song that began acoustic, was transformed by the band into much bigger song and then reduced it back for this social media post. 

If you'd like to listen to his set from PIAS Nites 2012, here's the link you'll need.

Enjoy the music ;)

WITTCL (Acoustic Video) - stream it here
WITTCL (MP3) - download here

brought to you with lots and lots of lemming-love ;) x
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