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Editors – In Concert at Pinkpop 2014 – June 6, 2014 – VPRO/3VOOR12 – Netherlands
Editors to kick off the week. In concert at Pinkpop from Landgraaf in The Netherlands from 2014.
Editors have so far released two platinum studio albums, and seven in total, with several million combined sales. Their debut album The Back Room was released in 2005. It contained the hits “Munich” and “Blood” and the following year received a Mercury Prize nomination.
Their follow-up album An End Has a Start went to number 1 in the UK Album Chart in June 2007 and earned the band a Brit Awards nomination for best British Band. It also spawned another Top 10 hit single, “Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors”. The band’s third album, In This Light and on This Evening, was released in October 2009 and went straight to number 1 in the UK Album Chart. The band released their fourth studio album, The Weight of Your Love, in July 2013, followed by self-produced In Dream in October 2015. In 2018, the band released their sixth album Violence. Their seventh album, EBM, was released in September 2022.
Alongside their critical acclaim and strong success in the UK Singles Chart, they consistently enjoyed sold-out tours and numerous headlining festival slots. Their brand of dark indie rock is commonly compared to the sound of bands such as Echo & the Bunnymen, Joy Division, Interpol, The Chameleons and U2.
Lead singer Tom Smith announced that the band would explore a new direction on their next album, pursuing a new, rawer sound. The new sound materialized itself on the third album through the use of traditional synthesisers instead of the band’s previous use of guitars. The producer of In This Light and on This Evening, Flood also increased the importance of “vibe” in the music’s sound, making it darker than the previous two albums, while also attempting to make the album sound as if it had been recorded live.
While Smith tends to write the lyrics and chords, song writing overall is a collaborative effort.[66] The song writing starts with Smith on the piano or acoustic guitar where he records them and sends them to the other band members where the song is turned into a full ‘Editors song’. Smith has said that he purposely makes the lyrics ambiguous so people can draw their own conclusions.[62]
“To us, it’s interesting if it has a darkness,” said Smith in 2015. “Whatever that is. On the lyric side of things, if I was singing about dancefloors or happier or rosier things, it wouldn’t ring true for me. I don’t know why that is. People quite often say, ‘oh, you write these sad lyrics but you’re not a sad person’ – and I’m not… I don’t think you need to be sad to write a sad song, everybody has a dark side.”
Proof of that comes via the venerable VPRO and their top-notch recording of all the proceedings.
So if you missed them, or are planning on catching them in Europe later on this Summer, here’s a taste of what the audience saw and loved at Pinkpop in 2014.
Just shy of an hour – and you can turn this one up too. Get ready for what promises to be an insane week.
