They may sound like Joy Division’s equally maladjusted little brothers on record, but in person, Editors – there is no “The” – are a rather jovial bunch who insist on conducting our chinwag in a boozer where it’s pints of creamy Guinness all round.
Another preconception is shattered when singer and guitarist Tom Smith asks where he can buy something “shiny and expensive” for his girlfriend Edith Bowman. It’s their first going-out-together anniversary and the man responsible for such acidic barbs as “Blood runs through your veins/That’s where our similarity ends” is pining for the BBC Radio 1 jockette. Thinking that Poundstretcher mightn’t be quite what he’s after, I recommend Arnott’s and then get down to the serious business of finding out how Editors have become one of the hottest rock ‘n’ roll properties on the planet.
“Making a decent record and touring our bollocks off for 12 months has helped,” Smith proffers, “but what’s really made the difference in terms of profile and sales is getting on daytime radio. What would have been considered ‘indie’ and a ‘Steve Lamacq record’ three years ago is now being played next to Kylie and Sugababes on the breakfast show, which is great ‘cos we’ve never considered our music to be superior to any particular audience. Well, except Keane’s!”
Talking of Sugababes, what did he make of the girls’ sensitive rendition of Arctic Monkeys’ ‘I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor’, and are they living in fear of Girls Aloud covering ‘Munich’?
“Too late,” Tom chuckles. “Corrine Bailey-Rae’s already done a jazzy, acoustic take on it for radio. She’s got a feel for the song, whereas Sugababes sound like they’re singing the Bangkok telephone directory.”
“Did you see them do it on the NME Awards?” inquires Smith’s fellow guitarist Chris Urbanowicz. “Their backing-band looked like they’d been plucked out of Spinal Tap and left to rot for 25 years. There was a real ‘men in the park with sweeties’ vibe about them.”
For a ‘How To Do Covers Properly’ masterclass, check out the wall of sound versions of REM’s 'Orange Crush’ and Talking Heads’ ‘Road To Nowhere’, which bulk up the new Editor’s single, ‘All Sparks’.
“It was the first time since putting The Back Room to bed in February 2005 that we’d been in a proper studio, and we loved every minute of it,” Smith enthuses. “It was a case of, ‘What can we do that’s new, but doesn’t eat into our stockpile of songs for the second album, which we’re going to start working on as soon as the festival season’s over?’”
Have bouquets of flowers or barbed wire been received from the authors?
“No, the only feedback we’ve had is Peter Buck saying, ‘Go for it!’ when we told him in Seattle that we were thinking of doing ‘Orange Crush’. We’ve sent him a copy, so we’ll either get a ‘Well done, chaps’ or a solicitor’s letter back in the post.”
Peter Buck isn’t the only A-List ligger who graced the Editors guest-list on their last American tour.
“Damon Albarn and System Of A Down both came to our after-show in New York,” Tom reveals. “We’d just done another cover of Gorillaz’ ‘Feel Good Inc.’ for Jo Whiley which again Damon didn’t know anything about. I was quite relieved ‘cos I completely ballsed up the start of it!
“No disrespect to Damon, but I was far more starstruck seeing Serge from System there because he’s not the sort of person who normally inhabits our world. He’s this cartoon-esque character that you only see on MTV.”
“Damon Albarn was a bit, well, lacking in social skills,” Urbanowicz volunteers. “You expect him to be a complete extrovert, but he’s actually quite shy.”
Although stopping short of playing golf with Bruce ‘n’ Tarby, Editors have embraced the business we call show with gusto.
“I don’t know about that, but we did a Friday night TV thing recently with Lorraine Kelly who's absolutely lovely,” Chris continues. “Another person you’d expect to be a knob but isn’t in the least is Daz Simpson, the English Eurovision guy. I met him at CD: UK and he was just treating the whole thing as a laugh.
“The only time I’ve felt slightly out of place was when we did the BBC Radio 1 Big Weekend. Instead of the alternative one that Yeah Yeah Yeahs and We Are Scientists were on, we were assigned to the Main Stage alongside Sugababes and Pink who one of the DJs said we were bopping to from the side of the stage and thusly earned me a slagging from my dad who’s turned into a musical snob! It was fun, but not really us.”
Did they elicit any girly screams?
“Yeah, but only from Keane who were on after us,” he deadpans.
According to my advisory panel of 14-year-old’s, Editors have become what was known in my day as a “pencil-case band”.
“It’s funny you say that ‘cause I found my old pencil-case when I went back home at Christmas and it had Blur, Oasis and Ocean Colour Scene – I know, ow! – felt-tipped all over it. There are also graphic artist quality Ash, Chili Peppers and Jane’s Addiction logos from the lessons I was really bored in.”
“Our logo isn’t really pencil-case applicable unlike, say, Cast who had that modish half-circle above their name,” Smith rues. “We’ll have to rectify that on the next album.”
Seeing as we’re all being nerdy trainspotters, where does the image on the front of The Back Room come from?
“It’s a photo we stumbled across of the tunnels underneath the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco,” Urbanowicz divulges. “We actually went there to do some shots for a magazine, but they were closed. The bloke who took it lives in Japan now, and not being commercially savvy was going to sell us it for about fifty quid. We had to insist on giving him more money.”
Editors were in Japan themselves a few months back – an experience that Tom Smith by turns found fun and horrifying.
“It’s the most un-western environment in which music like ours has mass appeal,” he says switching into socio-anthropological mode. “Their work ethic is that you get up early, do interview/interview/interview – break – interview/interview/interview – break – interview/interview/interview right up until show time, which is often as early as 6 o’clock. On the plus side, the fans are really sweet and give you presents!”
As Tom revealed earlier, as soon as they’ve said, “Thank you, goodnight!” to the people attending September 2’s Jersey Live festival, Editors will be locking themselves in the studio and not coming out until they’ve the follow-up to The Back Room completed. Do they have a sense at this stage of where it’s going to take them sonically?
“There are two new songs, ‘Bones’ and ‘The Weight Of The World’, in the live set that are the best we’ve ever written, and a good indication of the next record,” Smith concludes. “The faster songs will be faster, and the slower songs slower and bigger!”