British band Editors’ third album In This Light and On This Evening debuted at number one in the UK album chart five years ago today.
Despite its impressive debut commercial performance, the album received mixed reviews from critics as well as fans. The record sees a change in the band’s musical style as it is heavily based on a synthesised sound steering away from the guitar-driven tracks fans were previously used to. In essence, this was the moment in the band’s career where they decided to be a little more experimental.
‘Papillon’ was the first glimpse of this new experimental and electronic Editors, which was accompanied by a slightly ambiguous video featuring a group of men running through darkened streets without any clear objective or destination. Essentially, the video mirrors the urgency of the track emphasised by the continuing loop.
‘You Don’t Know Love’ and ‘Eat Raw Meat = Blood Drool’ followed, with both videos also conveying this expressive era of the Tom Smith fronted band. The former used experimental dance to portray a couple in the midst of a heated argument, while the latter is a bizarre retro video which paints “a truthful picture of the lies which affect our current state of existence in a (so called) free world,” according to the band.
In This Light and On This Evening was the last album to feature guitarist Chris Urbanowicz, who left the band three years later due to a difference in musical direction. In 2013, Editors – now featuring new band members Justin Lockey and Elliott Williams – released their fourth album titled The Weight of Your Love.
Lead singer, Tom Smith, recently hinted at new material by uploading a photo of a list of song titles which could potentially be the track list for their fifth album.
Revisit In This Light and On This Evening‘s highest charting single, ‘Papillon’, below.
