He might be recovering from jet-lag after playing Editors’ first festival of the summer in Japan, but Tom Smith is just happy that normal rock ‘n’ roll service has resumed. “We hadn’t been there for four years. It was great to be back and start again with what is a new chapter for the band. It’s a new band in many ways.”
Even if you were unaware of their tumultuous past three years, you could arrive at such a conclusion from simply listening to 2009’s In This Light And On This Evening and their newly released The Weight Of Your Love in succession. The Birmingham group’s latest offering is all about the songs; anthemic, hopeful things delivered by a group of musicians that sound unshackled. There’s even a little falsetto as Smith takes a break from his trademark doomed intonations, which, he laughs, “I’d have been terrified of doing on previous records!”
So it’s brighter and bolder than its predecessor. That Flood-produced work abandoned guitars in favour of dark synthscapes and claustrophobia. The reception was mixed but that wasn’t the problem: moving on from it was. Smith still can’t pinpoint exactly where it all went wrong. How they reached a fork in the road and headed down the bumpy trail that led to guitarist Chris Urbanowicz’s exit.
“It was gradual,” he explains. “We’d finished touring in 2010 and started rehearsing songs that had come from me.”
After several laboured recording sessions with Flood, panic started to set in. “We started asking ourselves, ‘What’s going wrong here? Is it the band, the producer,the songs?’ We go back into the rehearsal room, the days turn to weeks, and communication just completely breaks down. That was a very dark time.”
Smith, along with bassist Russell Leetch and drummer Ed Lay, were pulling in one direction, while Urbanowicz was pulling in another. What was at the root of the conflict?
“I think Chris has a much narrower frame of what he wanted to do,” Smith ventures, diplomatically. “Over the course of our first three records, we’d done everything that he was open to doing. Chris would never want to have a song with a string arrangement or an acoustic guitar. We always admired bands with longevity, that had kept their original line-up and keep playing forever. That isn’t the reality for most bands. It was a case of, ‘Shit, this is falling apart, that dream is going’. We could no longer function with Chris in the band.”
“Very much like splitting up with a girlfriend,” is how Smith describes it, and he admits they haven’t reached a point where he could play Urbanowicz the new record or even hang out as friends.
“No, not yet. It’s all raw, it’s still too soon. And he lives in New York so he’s not someone I see really. One day, I hope.”
The remaining trio took stock, added new members Justin Lockey and Elliott Williams, and spent a long time writing and rehearsing. Scott Litt-era REM was exciting them. So America was calling. Unfussy, widescreen rock – the kind Kings Of Leon trade in – became the aim. So they called producer Jacquire King (Kings Of Leon, Modest Mouse, Tom Waits).
“He lives in Nashville and it was his suggestion to go to there. It has a great history of country music but all the greats have gone through there. Even now, people like Jack White, The Black Keys... the studio itself was phenomenal. There was a guitar in the corner that Neil Young had scratched his name into. Dolly Parton and Kris Kristofferson were in the building.”
Being in the presence of such greats made them up their game. The songs were chiefly recorded live in the room, and given “traditional, classic” attention. Embracing the simplicity, it put Tom in mind of a time before their 2005 debut, The Back Room.
“It does feel like a record that I’ve been wanting to make for a long time,” he affirms. “Before we were Editors, we were Snowfield, and there was a more traditional nature to the way we were presenting songs. They were a little bit more sweeping.”
In keeping with the rejuvenated vibe, the lyrics focus on young lovers.
“That energy coming together for the first time. That kind of passion. Anything that’s going on outside of that – be it the telly, the news, religion – is just unimportant.”
It’s a fresh outlook from a man who’s more pessimistic than most, who worries as a young father (he has two children with BBC presenter Edith Bowman) about the world. A weight has been lifted. The Weight Of Your Love has given them a new lease of life. Editors Mark II.
“We were staring at the end,” he concludes. “So I feel very proud. Making this record has been amazingly rewarding and exciting. We feel in a good place at the moment.”
The Weight of Your Love is out now on PIAS.