Life is a Fear actually sounds a lot bigger when its unshackled from its studio confines and delivered by all five members of the group. I remember that in interviews around the time of ITLAOTE, Tom was saying that their main ambition was to tame the machines they were working with and to give them a more human quality. It would seem that this is is a recurring theme, something which I suspect we'll see more of as they flesh out the material in front of an audience. There's always a danger when you're making music primarily using machines that the soul of the song, whatever that is, gets lost along the way. Here, it seems very much intact.
There's a lot to like here, the only downside being that we don't get to see Tom throwing himself all over the stage as he so often does. The bassline sounds much less mechanical thanks to Russell playing it, as do the drums. It was nice to see Justin in there too with his guitar, as it did seem that quite a bit of what we had heard of In Dream at that time was going to be done using samplers and keys. I like the way that Tom dropped the falsetto at 4.30, it provided a nice little contrast to what came before.
The second track from the band's appearance is a full band version of Ocean of Night, sadly without the vocal finesse of La Goswell. However, what we do get are Ed's drums. Hot damn! They are really up in the mix, in contrast to the more gentle drumming of the studio version. Really driving everything along at a nice pace and building up to something towards the end, in contrast to the album take where the drums are almost a heartbeat keeping everything grounded. The arrangement is different because of the way it starts and ends, and without the extra vocals. This is the kind of stuff I love, where the band take what they've done and tweak it slightly to make it something new when they play it live.
The last part of the trilogy is Forgiveness. You can really hear the keyboards in this one, and the vocal interplay between Elliott and Tom towards the end of the song. This collection is probably as close to seeing the band in a rehearsal situation as you can get, and it's a lot of fun seeing them finding a way to deliver these studio-birthed songs to the rest of us out here in the world.
I don't know if it was intentional, but all the shots of Tom have a slightly seasick aspect to them, moving from side to side as they do. A conscious nod to the fact that this was recorded on a boat? Or am I just reading too much into things again? Possibly. Enjoy the music ;)
Life is a Fear - download here
Ocean of Night - download here
Forgiveness - download here
And don't forget that you can view Editors' previous Last.fm session from 2010 by using this link.
brought to you with lots and lots of lemming-love :) x
