Editors' No Harm - A Successful Recovery or Another False Start?

After a fourth album that can most kindly be described as disappointing, it seems that the new iteration of Editors as a five-piece after the departure of guitarist Chris Urbanowicz (arguably integral to the band’s early success) have finally hit their stride. Slick, snappy and, most importantly, exciting, No Harm is everything that the clunky The Weight of Your Love promised, yet failed to deliver.

The song opens forebodingly enough – rotating, swirling synths and bass-heavy electronic drums providing a subtle bed for Tom Smith’s oddly vulnerable baritone. The vocals sound close and unnerving, full of nervous energy (amplified by prominently overdubbed whisperings).

Smith has taken plenty of stick for his simple, just-make-it-rhyme-and-call-it-ambiguous approach to lyrics, especially when he tries to inject some actual meaning into songs. However, he is on top form here from the start, as he intones ‘I boil easier than you, crush my bones into glue’, recalling the delightfully dark bent of the band’s debut release. Whatever the fuck he’s actually on about.

While the core meaning is hard to fathom, lines like ‘my children despise my wonderful lies’ nod to a more personal contour within this song’s subject matter that adds to the claustrophobic, anxious tone.

What may be a slight concern for fans is that, while No Harm can be seen as a more mature, informed cousin to the first album’s morose anthemia, supplemented by the two newer members and the confidence of experience, it may also be viewed as a lazy attempt to jump onto the minimalist alternative rock bandwagon that Coldplay and Mumford & Sons have dabbled in more recently, in the absence of any truly consistent identity after the half-arsed grasping for one that was the band’s last effort.

A further potential concern, again, has two faces to it. It became clear on The Weight... (indeed, it was one of the album’s few consistencies) that Tom Smith has very much grown into his role as frontman, as the rest of the band shied further away from the spotlight that they were already cast in silhouette by. That record sounded as much like a Tom Smith solo album as we’re likely to get.

Here, again, Smith utterly owns the cramped spaces that the song leaves, the four other members happy to chip in with the occasional stab of bass guitar for emphasis, or the wiry guitar line that shepherds the song to its close (the drummer was apparently on a fag break). Smith’s arresting, elastic vocal performance, from the broody baritone verses to the smooth falsetto choruses, could either be a highlight or a worrying sign that Editors are becoming The Tom Smith Band, depending on your disposition.

Importantly, though, No Harm is an effective taster of things to come. It cascades slowly, without any real sense of release, which serves to make it feel very much like a single part of a whole. And while this does lead to the loss of a degree of listenability, it positions the track as an invigorating first look into Editors’ next release.