Editors play loud, cut the chit-chat

NEW YORK - Decidedly unglamorous and looking nothing like the "nu-goths" they're supposed to be, Birmingham band Editors nearly faded into the manufactured fog and Marshall stack shadows at Irving Plaza at the weekend.

Light on artifice and heavy on the volume, the UK quartet is touring in support of The Back Room, its debut release, which has been shortlisted for England's prestigious Mercury Prize.

Guitarist Chris Urbanowicz, bassist Russell Leetch and drummer Ed Lay let the rock flag fly high with the intro to the set opener, Someone Says. The song channels U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday, heavily. Yet the band has drawn more frequent comparisons to Interpol and predecessors Joy Division and Echo & the Bunnymen.

Those comparisons hinge on frontman Tom Smith's voice and tortured style. Handsome in the pale manner of Justin Timberlake or Eric McCormack, guitarist-keyboardist Smith ties his legs into strange knots and rocks back and forth in a sort of musical palsy, whether singing, riffing or sitting at his keyboard. Occasionally he reaches one arm over his head to touch the opposite shoulder, performing as if it were the most comfortable pose.

Smith's vocals are throaty but clear, with minor pitch issues (shared with the Ians -- Curtis and McCulloch -- to whom he is frequently compared). Yet his voice never hits Curtis' baritone depths, and Editors-penned songs don't approach the pop styling of the Bunnymen. Smith sings with the same blase timbre of Interpol's Paul Banks. But lyrically, Interpol is more complex. The Editors tend to be direct: "I have so much to say," Smith crooned to begin.

Beyond Smith's bodily contortions, the quartet's show lacked visual elements. Flourishes of yellow- and rose-colored lights and an onstage film crew were the band's only indulgences. (A video of the show will be released at an as-yet-undecided date.)

The group also refrained from improvisation and anecdotal addresses to the audience for most of the night. Still, Bullets -- the three-minute glam-punk gem that rivals the work of the Killers and Franz Ferdinand in terms of commercial potential -- stirred the audience to fist-pumping at the seventh-song stretch.

Three songs later, they dropped Munich, the track that gained US fame as a free iTunes download. It included a guitar showdown, with Smith's distorted, Wire-like chops outscreeching Urbanowicz's Edge-like solo. The band also trotted out two new songs: Bones, a straight rocker, and the slower, darker ballad Way of the World. Both will appear on the band's forthcoming release, due in spring.

- REUTERS/Hollywood Reporter