Editors – The Weight Of Your Love.
Four years is a long time. In that time, Editors have lost their guitarist, and expanded their line-up. But would you know? The world has changed, and we have changed, but nothing has changed as we journey through life together, slowly and towards the future. The Weight Of Your Love may sound flippant, using, after all the ‘L’ word, but it is Editors at their best. Whilst there is a left turn away from the potent mixture that made In This Light an engaging tale of electronics, this is a different and compelling record, the sound of a new identity but already known. And my God, these songs. I know I have said ‘these songs saved my life’ before, so many many times. But these songs. They mean so much. I’ve only known these songs a few days, but the tales they tell are known, familiar. These are songs taken from the heart I didn’t know I still felt.
So very personal.
The Weight Of Your Love is the gravity of romance. The power of love. Not in a liberating, way, but in the way that love carries with it something. A middle aged man knows the baggage of love. The luggage you cannot leave behind. It is heavy, and child-shaped, marriage-shaped, debt-shaped. From the opening song to the last, this is a record that utterly knows the meaning of love, the terrible power of entanglement, that the thing that sets you free can also imprison you, that gives you powers can also tie you down, and that a relationship is swapping one set of terrors for another set. From the opening ‘The Weight’ to the final notes of ‘Bird Of Prey’ this is a record that sets Editors apart. Some – cloth eared fuckwits – say it sounds like Coldplay . If Coldplay were this good, I’d adore them. Yes, ‘A Ton Of Love’ sounds like Echo & The Bunnymen . But Echo & The Bunnymen are brilliant. So shush now.
Editors may have changed, but the promise they showed on the last record has been fulfilled in a completely different way. Moving from what could have been the cusp of an electronic-fuelled revelation, they instead became less about the world. Less about machines. They became soul. ‘Sugar’ has the kind of rolling, pulsing threat of a mid 90’s rock act, but with an emotional literacy. This record has more soul than the entire histrionics of many ‘soul’ singers who can hit the perfect note but never feel a thing. I’m atomised, breathless, raw. And it is just music, just songs, but these are not just songs, these are so much more. These are feelings: emotions wrapped in sound.
‘What is This Thing Called Love?’ slays me. It has been years since the first time I heard something, I had to stop everything else, sit down, and just listen. It’s just a song, but it’s the story I’ve known over 20 years. Every word is ripped from my world. The first time I heard this I had to stop. I sat down, and just listened. Every word. And by the end, I was crying, This is my world in a song. Knowing it is here I feel less alone in the world. Because someone else feels this. The comfort, as such, of being sad. My God, this song. This bloody song. No song I have heard in years – twenty years – has done so much for me. Nothing. Not even ‘Nothing’, the amazing song that follows it. Because the original band arrangement, played live regularity throughout the last year has been shorn away and turned into a heart-rending soulburster. But still, only a fraction of what it once was. It sounds like the changing of the world. Like the end of one universe, the start of another, as the world built unravels and falls away – as I’ve got nothing, nothing left – only you. We walk through a crowd of strangers.
Love, the word, the concept, the feeling, carries with it a weight and a gravity. It can bring you down, it can set you free. In all its forms, the laughter, the tears, love is beautiful. Every kiss is a promise of wonderful things. Every moment of love comes with an inevitable sadness. One day we will be separated, we will hurt, we will cry, we will be rent against our will from the things we love, be they life itself, or a parent, a child, a small rabbit. Love is to hurt, and to know that it hurts, and to be brave enough to love anyway. And that is the weight of love, and it’s a weight worth holding.
This record is amazing.
For more from Mark, please visit The Final Word