Editors. They’re a band that’s never quite found the level of love and respect in the UK as they have across the rest of Europe, where they headline giant festivals. But yet, here they are 18 years on from their debut, 2005’s The Back Room, touring their seventh album, released at the back end of 2022. And you can’t argue with a tour that sees London, Glasgow, Manchester, Nottingham and this show in Bristol all selling out well in advance.
For the final show of the tour the venue is packed, and it’s an unexpected mix of older-than-you’d-think and younger-than-you’d-think punters, which means that the setlist they roll out has to cover all the bases. Happily, across the near two-hour running time, it does.
They’re not a band lacking confidence are Editors, with frontman Tom Smith saying barely anything other than “Hello Bristol“, instead choosing to save his energy for emoting every song like he’s in a piece of performance art, his unorthodox, loose-limbed dance style fascinating to watch. And to be fair, Smith’s confidence isn’t misplaced, he just about manages to hold attention during the obligatory solo acoustic section (including ‘Nothing‘ and ‘Lights‘) before the band return to the stage for a lengthy version of ‘Silence‘, which tests the patience a little.
It’s a massive save then for the ebb and flow of the show that classic track ‘Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors‘ and the frantic vigour of ‘The Racing Rats‘ come to lift the energy. Overall, Editors manage the setlist expertly, weaving their way through classic and unknown songs. Brave to start with four of the first five songs taken from recent album EBM, the sextet settle into a rhythm of classics (‘Sugar‘, ‘Bullets‘, ‘Fingers in the Factories‘) spotted with new tracks (‘Kiss‘) before smashing into an encore that’s expertly judged to last long in the memory: ‘An End Has A Start‘, ‘Munich‘, ‘Papillon‘.
In a literal career-spanning set the Birmingham-born band deliver with panache on the final night of a tour that confirms their status as the perpetual scrappy underdogs of British indie rock.
