The buttons have been pressed and the switches have been thrown on the festival campaign machinery, Mr Smith has emerged from his virus-protection tent, and Editors are now a functioning live act again. Everything kicked off on the first of the month with a strange affair in Rome, followed by a slightly more normal night out in Spain at WAM Festival.
A few days after that on the 9th of May, Edi Bow passed on some information that stirred the intrigue surrounding their current activities even further, including the possibility of something being released during the summer.
The subject of the Beyond the Tracks festival in Birmingham came up again courtesy of a comment left by La Goswell on one of the band's "in the studio" photos. It reads
"Beyond the tracks? @thmssmth looking forward to hearing new songs"
Notice that the question mark isn't after "hearing new songs", meaning it seemed like a statement of fact rather than a request. Sure enough, this was affirmed in a photograph of Russell and Elliott casually sitting beside a white board which just happens to contain a list of song titles with three brand new entries on it.
The new titles are:-
Cold
Hallelujah
Magazine
Hallelujah has appeared before in a photo, only it had the suffix So Low. It may be that the track has just been abbreviated here, but retains its full title in the same way that Smokers has. I think that what we're looking at here is a contenders collection, rather than a running order as they build their festival setlist. This would seem to have been confirmed by a second snap of another whiteboard, with numerous titles suggested and crossed out to fit within a 65 minute time-frame. Note that Hallelujah has "with outro" after it.
One thing that stands right out on both of the above song title snaps is that The Pulse is nowhere to be seen. They've rehearsed it, they've surrendered it to the bootleggers by airing it in public, and now it's vanished. In terms of knowing your audience, the diversity of a festival crowd almost demands that The Hits are used to win them over. The Pulse in the form we're familiar with runs at just over 6 minutes in length, and that's a lot of real estate to give up to a tune that most of the casual listeners won't be familiar with. I hope this is a temporary leave of absence, rather than falling away forever because I really like that track.
The month also saw a strange happening on Tom's Instagram page, where he posted a photo that's been haunting me for years. It's of the fabled hard-drive that contains the aborted sessions for E4 that they did with both Flood and Chris on board, with the tag "Dark Times" below it. I have written about this before, but the photo was shared the first time around by Ed with the caption "Failure". Evidently neither Editor has warm and fuzzy feelings about this digital Pandora's box, which is understandable considering what the emotional and physical cost on everyone involved in its inception was. Yet Ed's posting seemed entirely appropriate within a context because the band were working TWOYL, and so it was possibly being utilised as a reference point. Here's where we went wrong, here's what we can keep and move forward with etc.
The fact that as a band they were repeatedly visitors in their own grief for a good deal of the TWOYL campaign, with the media wanting to know how they dispatched Mr Urbanowicz, and often in excruciating detail, you'd expect them to want to leave this firmly in the past. From the perspective of a fan, I wouldn't want them to have to revisit those days. The Flood Sessions just didn't work out, for all the reasons that were pulled like rotten teeth from uncomfortable interviewees 3 or 4 years ago. And yet, here it is again.
Quite why this has surfaced right now as they prepare their 6th album is a mystery. For a band that has spent so much of their time as an active unit looking forward, this seems out of character for them. 2017 is an important year for Editors as next month marks the 10th anniversary of An End Has a Start being released, and I'd say it's very likely that that this will be coming up in any interviews that they do in June. Yet given Tom's initial reluctance to indulge in all the "Decade of The Back Room" nostalgia, it would be unusual for him to be glancing backwards now, particularly with a new record in his immediate future. Which brings us back around to the question prompted by that photo of the hard-drive that persists; why now? And more plainly, why at all? Have the (approximately) 5 years between it being assembled and the accomplishments Editors have achieved since provided the buffer that was required to be able to listen to these songs objectively?
Then, at the 11th hour on the 29th of May, RAI Radio 2 finally released an 18 minute interview that they've been sitting on for almost a whole month. It was recorded just prior to their appearance at Primo Maggio in Rome, and is as close to a state of the nation address as we've had so far from the band.
As a totally predictable side note, Dream Dark as Your Heaven remains unheard. Not moaning, just saying. Sigh.
As a totally predictable side note, Dream Dark as Your Heaven remains unheard. Not moaning, just saying. Sigh.
Editors' Instagram May is a solid collection of goodies, with ident videos, photos (including Justin's airport pics) and a small soundcheck video from Primo Maggio thrown in. More than that, it was a month that had some compelling narratives surrounding the band. With June being the 10th anniversary of An End Has a Start and more festival dates, I can't wait to see what's next. It's about to get interesting...
Editors Instagram - May 2017
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For all of Editors' previous Instagram posts, go here.
brought to you with lots and lots of lemming-love :) x
