Somewhere, out on the lonely roads of Europe and armed only with an ear for good music and some battered recording equipment, GaryUK has been travelling again. This is his audio document of Editors' show in Vienna on the 7th Feb 2020, and once more we owe him a debt of gratitude for his efforts. Thank you, Sir. You're still the man.
There's a strange phenomenon taking place on this tour, and it revolves around an absence. This is the Black Gold Tour, a showcase for the album of the same name. Yet if you look at the setlists for the recent shows at this early stage of the campaign, you'll notice that one song is conspicuous in its invisibility. Where is Black Gold? I know that the running order is fluid and will no doubt include and exclude material as it develops along the way, but I wonder if we'll ever get to hear it live? That lyric "Throw your hands up if you're running scared" is just begging to be used as crowd-bait. I understand that Black Gold specifically refers to the collection of hits itself, rather than a single track on it. I get that. Still it doesn't remove the feeling that there's an uninvited guest that isn't present for the festivities. In movie terms, it's like Friday the 13th without Jason Voorhees, Halloween without Michael Myers or Jaws with no shark. All your left with is an hour and a half of family-friendly footage showing camping, trick-or-treating and people enjoying the water respectively.
The worst thing that could happen is that Black Gold as a live experience gets added to that exclusive list of things we haven't heard but desperately want to. Items like Dream Dark as Your Heaven, or the Flood sessions for album 4. If this is a logistic thing, then that's fair enough, but let's not forget they learned how to play all the songs on ITLAOTE live and that involved swapping instruments, often while they were playing. Maybe it'll show up later, maybe not.
Do you want to hear something peculiar? I had a dream a few weeks ago that R.E.M. were playing Orange Crush on a stage somewhere, and in the middle of the song Tom ran onstage and grabbed the megaphone from Mr Stipe. He shouted "That's pretty good, but watch this", before the whole band arrived onstage to play Black Gold. That they were all dressed in monk's habits is besides the point. Also, the fact that I was the only member of the audience, and may or not have been wearing pants, is equally irrelevant. Stop making this weird.
I've noticed that as loose as the playing has been in terms of altering certain components, they've also shown that they can be true to the recorded versions of their music. For example, An End Has a Start has new intro music, Spiders has a new beginning, but Bones has gone back to the controversial 75% "Retreats" take that appeared on AEHAS. The merge between Frankenstein and Papillon was also abandoned for this show, so I get a sense that you really don't know quite what you'll be getting from night to night. I think that will go some way to reducing the predictability and keeping everything fresh, mostly for the band themselves because after all they're the ones who are doing this in quick repetition for the duration of this tour.
I do find that I'm missing songs like Darkness at the Door, Hallelujah (So Low) and The Pulse, but I'm also excited at the slim chance that they or other lost classics will be returning. They've done it with Escape the Nest and Spiders, so who knows what they'll decide to bring back down the line? While we wait and wonder, enjoy the music ;)
I do find that I'm missing songs like Darkness at the Door, Hallelujah (So Low) and The Pulse, but I'm also excited at the slim chance that they or other lost classics will be returning. They've done it with Escape the Nest and Spiders, so who knows what they'll decide to bring back down the line? While we wait and wonder, enjoy the music ;)
MP3s
An End Has a Start - download hereBullets - download here
Bones - download here
Escape the Nest - download here
Magazine - download here
Sugar - download here
Upside Down - download here
Violence - download here
Frankenstein - download here
Papillon - download here
Ocean of Night - download here
The Weight of the World - download here
Spiders - download here
A Ton of Love - download here
Formaldehyde - download here
Eat Raw Meat = Blood Drool - download here
Blood - download here
Fingers in the Factories - download here
Walk the Fleet Road - download here
You Are Fading - download here
Distance - download here
The Racing Rats - download here
Munich - download here
Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors - download here
All in a Zip - download here
brought to you with lots and lots of lemming-love :) x
