Something I have always admired about Editors, and Tom in particular, is the ability to take some obviously morose lyrics and place them in a song that everyone can sing along to.
"Say goodbye to everyone you have ever known,
You are not going to see them ever again"
"We can never go home, son, we no longer have one."
"I boil easier than you, crush my bones into glue."
Heart Attack seems to have taken that further, actually quite a bit further but more of that soon.
I was curious to see how Editors becoming a band of dudes in their 40's would shape the music, if it would blunt the blades and dampen the embers from whence this adventure all began 20 years ago. The pitfall of succumbing to the temptation of easing up and slowly floating away into blandness, partly due to ageing and also due to the changes in life circumstances. The world they inhabit hasn't been the most stable of venues lately. The disaster of Brexit followed by enforced dormancy due to covid just as your greatest hits pageant was getting started, then a prolonged absence from the stages of the world when that's where you do your best work (is that even up for debate any more?) etc etc. When the time came to finally start those old familiar processes of record/promotion/tour, you could put forth a decent case for just citing weariness and proclaiming "What's the point?", before silently bowing out
Or...
I saw the promotional shot before I heard the new single, and I feel like I instantly got the reference from Tom holding up three fingers. Humans are adept at seeing patterns so this could be all down to that, but there does seem to be some repetition going on here:-
Editors part 1 - 3 full length studio albums, a compilation and then lineup change.
Back Room / An End Has a Start / In This Light and on This Evening / Unedited
Chris is fired and Justin and Elliott are hired
Editors part 2 - 3 full length studio albums, a compilation and then lineup change
The Weight of Your Love / In Dream / VI OLENCE / Black Gold
Blanck Mass joins the band
Editors part 3 - ?
The biggest change here is obviously among the personnel. If they keep bringing more people in we're eventually going to end up with a goth Earth Wind and Fire, which would of course be spectacular. Given the history, I can only imagine the chills down the spinal column that both Justin and Elliott experienced when the idea of bringing in a new musician was first raised.
Uh-oh. Is this it?
Luckily for us, and for them, there was only addition. No subtraction. What's annoying about this is that it wasn't really a secret at all. They announced it a month before it was official, and most people including myself totally missed it. Check out this photo from March taken at Rahi's studio:-
In overall sound, I think that Heart Attack sits (un)comfortably on a direct line that extends back to the song Violence on album 6 (and even beyond through Our Love and Papillon). From the very beginning, this is all about percussion and not just from the drumkit. All
the instruments hit you, in a way that James Brown's funkiest jams used
to. You can hear it in Russell's bass which is completely locked into
Ed's drum pattern, which sounds like it's doing a lot more than
marking time, through the keys and the scratchy guitar line at around 4
minutes in. They all have a resonance borne of impact, rather than
flowing hand movements across strings/skins/keyboards. I wonder how much
of this as an influence has been introduced by Blanck Mass joining the
band? I know it's already been said that there's some New Order in Heart Attack, but I can hear a little bit of Between Planets by the Jesus and Mary Chain there too (see 2 minutes and 11 seconds of that track).
Tom has said it's a love song, about getting lost in someone and I think that's only half the story. In the right context, "No one will love you more than I do, I can promise you that" is a beautiful statement, a declaration of love and committment. Yet given everything that goes before it, this sounds like the final proclamations of a dangerously obsessed individual in the throes of a stalking endgame. A menacing threat, possibly to dismiss the idea of happiness being found anywhere else and with anyone else. The protagonist that Tom is representing has either done or is planning to do some extremely bad things. I don't think "his baby" is even aware he exists but boy, he's aware of her.
"My audience is you tonight"
I've replayed the single a lot, deciphering the words and then writing them out and oh my goodness, this is a dark one. Maybe Tom's blackest yet. Without delving into each and every line, (and initially I did but this post was starting to sound like I was as unhinged as the person in the song appears to be), I would suggest listening to it again with a new perspective. This time around, imagine the person singing is mostly talking to himself (or the other voices he's been chatting with regularly in his own mind) during the verses. Only in the chorus and the outro is the object of affection, and I do think they're being viewed as a possession, being addressed directly. Even so, it sounds unlikely that the person will be able to hear him now.
Pop has a history of people singing about doing some very dodgy things to other people in the name of love, whether it's Nick Cave murdering Kylie with a rock by the river or Tom Jones stabbing Delilah out of jealous rage, I think Heart Attack would not look out of place in that grouping. To me, it's an extremely danceable and accessible song sneakily carrying a profoundly negative subtext.
I absolutely love it.
I think it has the very rare status of being an Editors track that you already really enjoy in its studio form, but are thrilled to know will be even better once it's being directed at an unsuspecting audience at full volume somewhere. It sounds like the band distilling all the energy accumulated from 2 years of static silence, compacting it down through the technology available to them and rapid-firing it into the world as an announcement of their return. Clearly middle age has not mellowed them.
There's some extra credit due to the people behind the people too. Play It Again Sam has allowed the band just the right amount of renegade to facilitate this rebirth, and it's a parallel to the practices of Factory Records who for the most part allowed their artists to do their own thing back in the 80s and 90s. It's my opinion that as well as the quality of the songwriting and live work, the room to explore and create that Editors have been granted by their label is the main reason they are still be active in 2022.
PIAS - "Lineup change for the new record? Yeah!"
PIAS - "You want to lead the E7 campaign with a track that contains swearing, thus limiting its day time radio play? No problem!"
PIAS - "The video will be computer generated and feature no clear images of any band members? Great!"
PIAS - "So the new song could possibly be interpreted by weirdos on the
internet as an ode to unrequited love that may or may not end in the
most final and messy way possible? High five, you crazy Editors!"
Looking back, if those initial post-Chris demos for Editors' album 4 been accepted rather than flat out rejected by Sony in 2012, I guarantee that this wouldn't be happening. There's no chance a major would have allowed the band to experiment to the extent that they have, and the pressure to be strictly commercial and shift those units may well have broken them up for good eventually. Just as with the decision to stay in Birmingham and then sign with Kitchenware when bigger names came calling back at the start, they sidestepped the land mine again.
This is a single song from a larger collection that's on the way, so it's too early to jump to the final analysis of this new incarnation of Editors, but the initial signs are very promising. Welcome back, fellas.
Tom's Ident for Heart Attack
The Live Chat crawl from video's release (purely for the hardcores!)
You can check out the ultra-trippy computer generated promo using this link
And you can stream the song on various platforms using this link
brought to you with lots and lots of lemming-love ;) x
