When every city in the Western world is kitted out with top-notch recording facilities, you’d have to wonder why any band would pick a bleak and lonely outpost as the perfect spot to make an album. As Russell Leetch explains, Editors actually didn’t.
“We originally went up to Crear to rehearse, rather than to make a record,” he recalls. “Instead of setting ourselves up in Birmingham, say, with people commuting, we said we’d go on lockdown somewhere. What happened from there was just a happy accident.”
Given some of the surprises Editors have had in the past few years, the creation of their fifth LP, In Dream, was particularly fortuitous indeed. Three years ago, lead guitarist Chris Urbanowicz left the group, just as In This Light And On This Evening signalled the maturation of the quartet. As a result, their first effort with a new five-pronged line-up, The Weight Of Your Love, was forced a little off-course.
“We had to restart, in a way,” Russell admits. “To be able to function as a traditional band, we needed to make a record that was a little more straight-up; no layers, just the band playing. This record is really the follow-up to our third album. It’s what we would have made last time if we hadn’t gone through that change.”
Indeed, In Dream does seem to point to a continuation of sorts, though that’s not to say that the intervening period – and the aforementioned relocation – didn’t play a significant part too. Russell agrees that the unusual location fed into the sonic atmosphere of the record.
“It was pretty cosmic, without getting too hippy about it,” he grins. “I’m totally into that, whereas Tom is a little more cynical – I don’t think he believes in the moon. But it’s strange how much synthesisers and drum machines work in a landscape of fields. We could see the ocean from the window, and the island of Jura across from us, covered in snow. There was an amazing picture in front of us all the time.”
Perhaps that’s why the record evokes such vivid visuals – and why there’s serious expanse on show.
“Half of the album has very dark elements to it, on songs like ‘No Harm’. But then you have ‘Our Love’, and ‘All The Kings’, which are more like weird disco tunes. There’s definitely two sides to the album – and there’s absolutely a journey involved.”
For the first time, it’s a journey the band made without the guiding hand of a producer, as they decided to take that responsibility on themselves. It’s not that they were completely alone, though – the album also sees a guest vocalist getting involved, something else the band had never tried before.
“A few years ago, we’d wanted ‘The Big Exit’ to be a duet. It never happened, but doing something like that had always been on the cards. We met Rachel [Goswell, of Slowdive] at Primavera last year and thought she’d work well, and she was a fan of the band also. Meanwhile, we used to listen to Slowdive on the tour bus when we were starting out. It’s funny how these things align.”
When it comes to taking stock of how things have taken shape for the group, this summer’s 10th anniversary of their debut LP, The Back Room, provided plenty opportunity to review their path.
“We didn’t want to look back too much, for fear the record became The Back Room Mk II,” Russell asserts. “But we put a message on Facebook, and the messages we got back were quite heartwarming. To have made an album that means a lot to people is pretty great.”
Though sometimes, it’s all a bit too much.
“We were doing a signing session, and a mother brought her kid along to have a copy of An End Has A Start signed, because it’s the song he was born to. That’s weird, for any number of reasons – beginning with the song title...”