Editors, Chop Suey, Seattle 9/18/07
photo by JoshC
Every Monday through Friday, we deliver a different song as part our Song of the Day podcast subscription. This podcast features exclusive KEXP in-studio performances, unreleased songs, and recordings from independent artists that our DJs think you should hear. Today’s featured selection, chosen by Morning Show host John Richards, is Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors
by Editors from the 2007 album An End Has A Start on Fader.
To follow their previous effort, the platinum-selling and Mercury Prize-nominated The Back Room, Editors return with more woeful tunes under the sleek production of Jacknife Lee (Bloc Party). While this album sacrifices some of the moody guitars for the mellower piano, Editors maintain rank as one of the post-punk revival’s torch bearers. An End… finds the band attempting to put on record the sonic intensity of their live performance while still paying homage to the sound that got them there. Thematically, the album deals almost exclusively with imminent death, providing great weight to these already impacting songs. As this Birmingham band is about to head back overseas, I hope you were smart enough to catch their show at Chop Suey the other night. If not, here’s one of several clips from the performance uploaded to YouTube — this is “Bullets”:
