Producer Flood revises Editors’ sound

The United Kingdom is no stranger to resounding yet haunting indie-rock bands guided by post-punk melancholy and ascending synth lines. Blame it on the sovereign state’s dreary weather or the Manchester club scene of the late 1970s, but the recent U.S. release of Editors’ third studio album, In This Light and On This Evening continues this accented dark indie-rock dalliance.

Spawned from the post-punk resurgence of the early 2000s — as was the case in the United Kingdon with Franz Ferdinand and Bloc Party and across the pond with New York City-based groups like The Strokes and Interpol — Editors have been the British band du jour since the group’s first two albums, The Back Room and An End Has a Start, yielding top-10 singles and earning platinum recognition for selling more than 2 million copies worldwide.

After these early successes, the band was praised by The Mail on Sunday as the second biggest British band of the decade, after the Arctic Monkeys. And as for all the comparisons to post-punk originators, the band has already produced a progeny in similarly despondent yet musically illuminated fellow Brits, White Lies.

For In This Light and On This Evening, Editors kept it in the British family by recruiting Grammy Award-winning producer Mark “Flood” Ellis, whose previous clients include The Killers, Depeche Mode and U2, and whose musical signature incorporates a heavy use of synthesizers. The band’s members said months before In This Light and On This Evening dropped in the United Kingdom on Oct. 9 that they wanted their third album to have a newer, rawer sound. Although it’s a commendable wish, it strikes fans as a patent unlikelihood for a two-time platinum band that sells out arenas in Europe.

It’d be a stretch to say that Editors accomplished its goal. Ultimately, this incestual collaboration appears to have generally done Editors more harm than good — specifically on In This Light and On This Evening — keeping both the band and its sound strictly within the musical confines of the Union Jack.

From the album’s opening songs, it’s obvious Flood has driven the group down the synthesized road at full speed. “Papillion” pulsates with a racing electronic melody precisely fit for dance-punk halls, while the harmonious, church choir-esque “You Don’t Know Love” delivers a sleek yet generic indie-rock anthem. As one catchy electro-rock hook picks up from where the other left off, it forces the listener to wonder if Editors either strayed too far from the shadowy essence of its previous albums or if the band failed to experiment enough.

In This Light and On This Evening mellows the pacing with “The Boxer,” a dulcet tune that features echoing guitars playing second-string to spiraling synth lines and lead vocalist Tom Smith’s smooth and refined baritone. “The Boxer” is the first moment on the album  where the band’s call for a more stripped-bare timbre is not only apparent but valid and incredibly appealing.

The same grittiness can also be found on the jarring synth ballad “The Big Exit,” where Smith pulls off an eerie Ian Curtis impersonation as he belts lovelorn lyrics that would make any Curtis worshipper proud. It is then, with Smith’s voice backed by a pounding drum beat and maddening screeching that sounds like a metal chair being forcefully scraped against a linoleum floor, that Editors come into its own — though perhaps a bit too late into the album.

The album is cohesive overall but, although the brooding vibe is there, the sound is not. While Ian Curtis-led Joy Division’s music felt spacious with its instrumentation minimal yet sonically vast, In This Light and On This Evening feels compressed and claustrophobic as the use of synthesizers suffocates the listener in its overproduction.

It would be daunting for any band to live up and strive to exceed expectations with an endless barrage of Joy Division and Echo and the Bunnyman raining down on it, but Editors should take a hint from its predecessors and make an effort to trim the synth fat. Sometimes, a bit of editing goes a long way.