Live Review: Editors at Terminal 5 [01.17.08]

It was cold and raining and the Terminal 5 box office had no record of my tickets. As I stood on 56th Street, soaked to the bone, I cursed my luck and Editors for bringing the soggy English weather with them.

Were it not for my love of gloomy post-punk-indie and the numerous assurances from friends across the pond that this would be an epic show, I might have packed it in and gone to bed. Instead, I crossed my fingers, bought a new ticket and hoped that Editors would not disappoint.

As it happened, it was my lucky night after all. Following extremely strong opening sets from Louis XIV and Hot Hot Heat, the Birmingham four-piece brought the rock without mercy or fanfare. On stage, Editors were a strange mixture of indie-band appeal and the kind of epic stage presence that immediately reminded me of U2 circa War.



I found the performance surprisingly dynamic considering the rainy day topics of many of the band’s songs. Though Chris Urbanowicz's guitar riffs dazzled throughout the set and Russell Leetch laid down thick bass lines to Ed Lay's feverish hi-hat, Editors' stage presence was dominated by frontman Tom Smith.



Dressed in a dark button-down and jeans, Smith careened across the stage pausing either to play piano or to play on top of it. When at center stage, his frenetic movements only increased. With guitar holstered on the left, Smith threw out one hyper extended hand gesture after another before returning to his signature double-fisted mic grip. The depths of Smith’s baritone channeled Jim Morrison while the higher end of his range evoked a slightly Michael Stipe croon.

Drawing mainly from their 2007 release An End Has A Start, the band had heads nodding and fists in the air from show opener "Bones" to the finale "Fingers In The Factories." Tracks "Blood," "Munich," and "Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors" drew particularly strong responses from the crowd.



Minutes after leaving the pit, I realized that the magic of an Editors show does not reside in some profoundly personal explanation of the their melancholy songs or a slow tear-jerking piano solo, it springs from the band's uncanny ability to transform their gloomy everyman lyrics into a danceable and uplifting adrenaline-infused experience.

Set List:

All Sparks
An End Has A Start
Bullets
Escape The Nest
The Weight Of The World
Lights
Blood
When Anger Shows
You Are Fading
The Racing Rats
Munich
Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors
Fingers In The Factories











Photography and Review by Chris Owyoung for Loose Record.