Editors Break Down New Album EBM Track By Track: Exclusive
The post Editors Break Down New Album EBM Track By Track: Exclusive appeared first on Consequence.
UK alt-rock group Editors have returned with their seventh studio album, EBM, on Friday (September 23rd). The group’s latest venture sees them delve into the realms of industrial and electronic rock, while incorporating the band’s longtime indie rock sound.
Throughout its nine tracks, EBM doesn’t wait to embrace this new endeavor. The frenetic opening of “Heart Attack” sets the background tone of subtle abrasiveness that appears throughout many of the tracks. The powerful vocals of frontman Tom Smith are amplified by a grandiose array of keys, percussion, and guitar.
While industrial might be the MO of EBM, that doesn’t prevent Editors (rounded out by Russell Leetch, Ed Lay, Justin Lockey, Elliott Williams, and Benjamin John Power) from straying away from their wheelhouse entirely. The coarse sounds eluded to on the opening track are stripped away on “Karma Climb,” creating a track filled with a sense of elation akin to the band’s earlier works.
But EBM’s aim isn’t to reminisce on the approach that made Editors a staple in the UK rock scene; it’s a project that emphasizes growth. Don’t let the title of “Strawberry Lemonade” confuse you, as its dystopian sound of scattered drums and ominous chords is a far cry from tracks like “Karma Climb.”
Branching out to new sounds is far from easy, yet EBM serves as an example of a seamless transition of genres for Editors. They manage to adopt an industrial approach while maintaining their past sounds, allowing for moments that fuse experimentation and incorporation.
Listen to Tom Smith and Benjamin John Power of Editors’ EBM below and check out the Track By Track breakdown of the record.
“Heart Attack”:
Tom Smith: “Heart Attack” is the first song on EBM. It’s also the first song that people heard. It’s the first taste of Editors 3.0.
Ben Power: What’s interesting about “Heart Attack” is that there’s a very frantic nature to it that I think was the starting point that the track was kind of carved around. There’s a very fast, very panicked arp that runs throughout the whole thing. It’s very anxious-sounding.
Smith: My job with a lot of the songs on this record was to decorate these musical pieces of Ben with my voice. Normally, I’d start by working with acoustic guitar or piano, but with this, it was straight into these electronic worlds. I used different tools to make my voice work in that environment, namely layering and manipulation of pitch. With “Heart Attack,” particularly, there are sections in this song where the things I’ve done to my voice are very different from how I’ve done things before.
“Picturesque”:
Smith: “Picturesque,” to me, is a little bit emo. When I first heard your cut-up vocal samples in this, I was like, “What the fuck!” It’s pretty out there for Editors.
Power: Yes, I feel like you can definitely feel some Blanck Mass bleeding in here.
Smith: During the studio process, it’s gone somewhere pretty rock as well, which is where that emo thing feels quite tied in.
Power: That second part of the last chorus really hammers that emo thing home for me. It’s actually one of my favorite moments on the record — the second part of the last chorus.
“Karma Climb”:
Power: “Karma Climb” was the first piece of original music that we wrote as a new team. [Ed. note: Power had previously worked with the band on their 2018 album Violence, but EBM marks his debut as an official band member.]
Smith: The idea at that point was to write a song to be heard at a concert, a festival, which never happened. But, that kind of yearning for that collective hedonism is filtered into the lyrics and musicality as well. It feels like a cousin to some of our earliest singles too. It’s one of the songs on the record that you can sit next to older Editors’ songs slightly more comfortably than others, because there are songs on this record that are a bigger step away from what we’ve done before.
Power: Being the first that we wrote together, “Karma Climb” was essentially the experiment to see if this was going to work. Obviously, it did work, which leads us into the second track that we wrote together: “Kiss.”
“Kiss”:
Power: “Kiss” is the disco song that I never really thought was going to be a disco song when we first started working on it, but it became a disco song.
Smith: Maybe it’s the falsetto that makes it feel more disco.
Power: I think once Tom had sent his vocal demo back, I thought, “He’s angling for a disco song,” and I was on board. It was in the experimental phase.
Smith: Elliot, as well, was super keen. There’s a longing, a sadness in the melodic content in this song.
Power: A lot of the best disco songs do have that element.
Smith: The song is kind of about breathing life back into somebody. It’s quite simple. It’s quite obvious what it’s saying.
“Silence”:
Smith: Firstly, “Silence” is one of two songs on the record which I started the writing of. We did the production and recording in the studio together towards the end of the process of the record. We knew I had this song lying around, and we knew we were going to try to work on it together.
Power: It’s quite nice to actually have experienced us coming together in the studio, if you compare it to how the rest of the album was made and the evolution of the rest of the songs. It was my first involvement in collaborating in the actual studio with Tom.
Smith: It started as a piano song. It deals with lockdown and missing people and contact, and that time, really. It’s a sad reflective moment.
“Strawberry Lemonade”:
Power: “Strawberry Lemonade” is a bit of a curveball.
Smith: Yeah, I think there are a couple of moments on this record that are out there or just more confrontational than we’d been before. It’s a combination of the musical ideas that Ben’s bringing, the sounds, and us just embracing that, and kind of like going, “Okay, if this is going to be some kind of techno-rave rock song, let’s do it. Let’s go through with it.” And that kind of incessant riff that punctuates the song, coupled with the kind of repetitive, deranged vocal thing makes the whole thing sound kind of evil, right?
Power: Yeah, absolutely. The hard arps and beat and such in this track is very characteristic of what we initially were looking for.
Smith: Absolutely. The song takes you into quite a dramatic, sweeping chorus. I think a lot of Editors fans may casually think that what Ben is bringing to this process is things that are ugly and noisy. And as much as he is doing that, the chord progressions that he’s written are just unbelievably melodic, beautiful, and sweeping. And I think you wouldn’t expect that from him, perhaps.
“Vibe”:
Smith: “Vibe” is like “Silence,” the other song that was started by me. Unlike “Silence,” though, I gave Ben the idea, and then he worked on the production and used that to fuel the song that you’ve heard now. We kept talking about waterparks with this one.
Power: For some reason, it seems — for lack of a better term — a little tongue in cheek. It’s cheeky. Maybe that’s a better way of putting it. It does feel cheeky, but it’s extremely groovy.
Smith: We want this kind of like Euro, gnarly house kind of feel to the riff.
Power: Yeah, it’s a lot of fun, actually. Isn’t it? I think that’s maybe where the waterpark thing came from.
Smith: Who doesn’t like a waterpark?
“Educate”:
Smith: I think “Educate” feels like, in some ways, quite a more traditional band piece.
Power: It does, and I think when I first sent you the demo for this, that’s maybe how I envisioned it in my head — in a more traditional setup.
Smith: It felt a lot like The Cure to me. It came from that kind of place, and it’s developed this kind of angry, punky chorus. The little bits of aggression are aimed at the world that we’re living in. The songs aren’t big political statements, but there are little lines here and there that are aimed at the world we have around us right now — some kind of post-Brexit Britain. So there’s a bit of that in “Educate,” too.
Power: Absolutely, especially on our way heading into the chorus, there’s a moment where the chord progression projects uncertainty in a musical sense.
“Strange Intimacy”:
Smith: “Strange Intimacy is our operatic, kind of theatrical, techno closer. We wanted to do some kind of drawn-out piece that felt less songlike and more dramatic.
Power: To a degree, it’s freeform.
Smith: I mean, of course, you then put this massive chorus in the middle of it. It feels a little bit like a brother to the track “Violence” to me as well, strangely. But it’s on steroids.
Power: It didn’t feel like we needed to be kind of boxed in about what a techno song should be. There’s going to be room for experimentation when we play it live.
Smith: It’s gonna sound good when we do eventually get to play it at festivals.
Editors Break Down New Album EBM Track By Track: Exclusive
Joe Eckstein
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