After 6 consecutive top 10 albums, Editors released their Best Of record, “Black Gold”, last year. 2020 sees the indie-rock band embark on a huge run of dates billed as a Greatest Hits tour.
Like many of the British indie bands catapulted into the mainsteam in the mid 00’s, Editors‘ commercial success in the UK has levelled off somewhat in the decade since their third LP, “In This Light and on this Evening”, topped the charts here in 2009. They have remained a significant force in Europe where they regularly fill arenas and headline festivals – each of their most recent 3 albums have reached No1 in Belgium!
This is the opening night of their homeland run of shows which also takes in Wembley Arena. It’s something of a ‘homecoming’ gig for the band who met while living in Birmingham and started off playing the city’s smaller venues. It’s a somewhat ambitious booking which is shown in the reduced capacity setup of the arena. Even in its ‘academy’ layout, the show is far from sold out.
It’s clear from the opening double hit of “An End Has A Start” and “Bullets” that, regardless of the size of the crowd, this is an arena band. An impressive light show perfectly matches the venue-filling sound as singer, Tom Smith, stomps about the stage with all the confidence of a front-man who has been doing this for over 15 years.
There’s little in the way of chat as the band focus on tearing through 24 songs from their back catalogue; more than half of tonight’s setlist comes from their first 2 records and it’s the singles from Mercury Prize-nominated debut, “The Back Room”, which get the biggest reaction of the night from those in the seats who stand for the hits.
In the standing section of the arena, the fans are visibly grateful when Editors switch the Greatest Hits for album cuts such as “Escape The Nest” and “Spiders”.
The band’s synth experimentation hasn’t always been popular with some of the fans of the Interpol-like approach of their earlier material but, in a live setting, it’s impossible to argue that tracks like “Papillon” and 2019 single “Frankenstein” don’t steal the show.
An acoustic version of “No Sound But The Wind” shows that Tom’s voice remains as clear and powerful as it ever was. It must be strange to him for it to receive a relatively muted reception in his home country when it’s greeted like an anthem elsewhere in Europe having been a Number 1 single in Belgium.
An encore of “The Racing Rats”, “Munich” and “Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors” is about as strong a run of top 40 hits as any of their contemporaries could wish for.
There are rumours of the band headlining the John Peel stage at Glastonbury this Summer and, if true, we’d recommend that you pop into see them. All sparks might burn out in the end, but there’s plenty of fire left in Editors’ live shows.
