Tuesday, July 10, 2007
my second bit of music writing ever published! Editors
Barfly Camden, Tuesday 24 May
The Interpol-alikes from Birmingham are actually pretty fantastic
The first couple of songs I spend near the back, resolutely nonplussed, thinking: they sound like Joy Division; they sound like U2; they sound like Ian Curtis singing with U2. Towards the end of the second song I'm shifting forward and out of snotty smartarse mode, just thinking about how nice it is to see a band at the Barfly who don't have shaggy, we're-in-a-band, we-listen-to-post-punk hair. Then Editors play their third song, Blood, and around this time I reach the tipping point, the magic gig moment where you start fixing on one repeated lyric, or the bass line, like a little zen student, and you get that feeling that you understand exactly what they mean, exactly how they feel, and no one else has ever expressed it quite that way before. I don't mean to make it sound like an epiphany, or some super-spiritual experience, because it isn't - it's what should happen at every gig. You forget to look around to see if there's anyone in the crowd you want to suck your cheeks in for, you forget to work out what sharp, insightful and hopefully witty remark you'll make about the band afterwards, you forget that you need a pee.
You may think they sound like a not-so-good Interpol on record, but we all know that seeing a band live is a whole different thing to buying the seven inch, and live, at this gig at least, Editors bring back my teenage swoon. I don't mean because they're sexy (although singer Tom Smith and guitarist Chris Urbanowicz have a Carl/Pete homoerotic stage thing going on which is, you know, quite exciting). The teenage swoon is the romantic, excited feeling you have when you think that a band gets you, and you get them. Their final song, Open Your Arms, teeters between pompous and epic, but when they play it, I am in full swoon. It may not be a life-changing, soul-shaking thing, but it's why we go to gigs.
The Interpol-alikes from Birmingham are actually pretty fantastic
The first couple of songs I spend near the back, resolutely nonplussed, thinking: they sound like Joy Division; they sound like U2; they sound like Ian Curtis singing with U2. Towards the end of the second song I'm shifting forward and out of snotty smartarse mode, just thinking about how nice it is to see a band at the Barfly who don't have shaggy, we're-in-a-band, we-listen-to-post-punk hair. Then Editors play their third song, Blood, and around this time I reach the tipping point, the magic gig moment where you start fixing on one repeated lyric, or the bass line, like a little zen student, and you get that feeling that you understand exactly what they mean, exactly how they feel, and no one else has ever expressed it quite that way before. I don't mean to make it sound like an epiphany, or some super-spiritual experience, because it isn't - it's what should happen at every gig. You forget to look around to see if there's anyone in the crowd you want to suck your cheeks in for, you forget to work out what sharp, insightful and hopefully witty remark you'll make about the band afterwards, you forget that you need a pee.
You may think they sound like a not-so-good Interpol on record, but we all know that seeing a band live is a whole different thing to buying the seven inch, and live, at this gig at least, Editors bring back my teenage swoon. I don't mean because they're sexy (although singer Tom Smith and guitarist Chris Urbanowicz have a Carl/Pete homoerotic stage thing going on which is, you know, quite exciting). The teenage swoon is the romantic, excited feeling you have when you think that a band gets you, and you get them. Their final song, Open Your Arms, teeters between pompous and epic, but when they play it, I am in full swoon. It may not be a life-changing, soul-shaking thing, but it's why we go to gigs.
