Editors - 'Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors' + 'Push Your Head Towards The Air'

Another month, another version of 'Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors' (the third so far). I probably wouldn't be listening to Editors if it wasn't for this song. I have their two albums, The Back Room and An End Has A Start, on CD now and they're pretty great (Back Room a little less so, perhaps, a bit too post-punk-retro in feel). Good, epic songs of which 'Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors' is probably the best - so the chance to get another version of the single, on clear white vinyl, was an easy enough one to jump at.

It's limited edition, too. No. 3509 out of 10,000. Wow!

The cover is the same as the first release, but metallic. The record inside is in a silver card sleeve and, like I said, is transparent white vinyl.

'Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors' 7" Vinyl #2: SKX93

Kitchenware Records, 2007.

1. 'Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors'

2. 'The Picture'

The A-side recording is as far as I know exactly the same as the album or other single version. My first post on it didn't really describe it, and the second just looked at how it worked as a live track. I guess I can't really talk about much more than the flawless, crystalline, high-pitched guitar which makes this song. There's more to it though, the cadence of the lyrics and the journey of the rhythm from opening to the build-up and the catharsis, all against which the guitar line is just a delicate if beautiful counterstroke. To analyze the song any further defeats the purpose of enjoying it, and doesn't help explain why I like it so much in the first place.

The B-side for the first version of the single, 'Some Kind of Spark', is pretty good, but this track is just beautiful. It has choral singing. Choral singing!

In fact, 'Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors' has a bit of choral singing on it too, a sort of round-up-everyone-in-the-studio-type affair (wikipedia/Smokers_Outside_The_Hospital_Doors#Production). But the singing on 'The Picture' hits from the first couple of seconds into the song, a constant tone laid down in the background of the whole track. A little like a Gregorian chant I suppose, except not really. And above that are laid the soft strumming of an acoustic guitar, the gentle interjection of its abovementioned 'crystalline' companion, and the gentle rise and fall of voices.

"Rest your weary head, close your heavy eyes

This last drink's on me, your smile shines on me

You look back at the picture and realise things then were different

It's not who you know, it's what you know then"

Download vinyl rip

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The fourth single from An End Has A Start, 'Push Your Head Towards the Air', was due to be released on the 3rd of March, limited to 500 copies in all formats. The vinyl release had the B-side of 'Spiders' recorded live at the BBC Electric Proms, which sounded really interesting (the Electric Proms is an update of the classical music Proms to involve various big UK bands backed with a full orchestra). I inquired after getting a copy (before the release date, obviously) from Road Records but according to their suppliers "it was deleted on the day of release" leaving them unable to get a copy for me. Wikipedia now sez:

" All 3 formats of the UK edition of the single were limited to 500 copies each, all of which sold out through internet pre-orders before the release date, leaving many fans disappointed.

A 2nd 7" released by PIAS has appeared on the internet under the release date of date March 21, however no additional information has been given."

In the meantime, you can enjoy the rather excellent video for 'Push Your Head Towards The Air'. The stark black and white photography, slow-motion action, and the hair... it's really beautiful:

I don't usually look at the homemade videos on YouTube, but this guy has actually done quite a good, soft-voiced acoustic version of the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLEaPU8D6Aw&NR=1

Editors - The Racing Rats (vinyl rip + art post)

I

Apologies if my posting a lot of vinyl releases is taking away too much of this blog's focus on, er, mid-90s hardcore and post-hardcore that I heard a decade too late. But I think my nostalgic and not-so-nostalgic purchases still kind of link up with that whole line of music.

I think it's good also to take some of the focus off American rock bands and show some stuff more related to what's happening over here. Which is, mostly, a continued explosion of sloppy post-pop-punk or, as Jeffen from music ruined my life explains it, "The British need to crank out a recycled guitar-bass-drums pop band every fifteen minutes to keep the boys in the press happy". I'm looking at you, Arctic Monkeys, Pigeon Detectives, et al - plenty of bands with plenty of good points, but all together way too, uh, plentiful. (That said, their pressure on the airwaves seems to have reduced somewhat recently, thanks to sloppy Irish post-pop-punk - way to go Ham Sandwich!). Anyway, there are a few notable bands with a bit of class, like these chaps, Editors.

(Apologies, also, if the pictures slow your browser - I try to keep the self-serving, pretentious scans to a minimum but at the same time, I do need to show the full set.)

But if you're still looking for something more punk, check out this (coincidentally British) guy's blog, The Poet You Never Were, for lots of "emo, screamo, d-beat, emo-violence, post-hardcore", mostly on vinyl - and also check out a new, again also UK, blog, See the sticks you've thrown.

II

the sounds

The Racing Rats

Part 1: (Limited Edition Numbered Red Vinyl) Kitchenware Records SKX97, 2007.

Part 2: Kitchenware Records SKX972, 2007.

A 01 - 'The Racing Rats' (Live)

B 02 - 'Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors' (Live Demo)

A 03 - 'The Racing Rats' (Original Demo)

B 04 - 'A Thousand Pieces'

Download

'The Racing Rats' is the third single from the Editor's An End Has A Start and is quite similar to 'Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors': slow, heavy rhythm alternating with frantic, high-pitched guitar. It's a good song, very effective and even a little dancey in parts. And it's got that one line that sounds really profound even when you haven't worked out what it means yet, 'If a plane were to fall from the sky/How big a hole would it leave/In the surface of the earth?'

'Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors' works very well as a live recording, too. Here the crystalline guitar is heard less flawlessly than on the album or single recording, which even gives it more feeling. Obviously 'The Racing Rats' and 'Smoking Outside The Hospital Doors' make a good pairing. Both the live recordings are of very good quality and any differences only add to the feel of the songs.

Conversely, the sparse sound of the demo 'Racing Rats', consists mainly (but not, I think, entirely) the vocals and piano of lead singer Tom Smith. Somehow, hearing the song devoid of the trademark post-punk revival guitar sound of Editors heightens the intensity of the rhythm and the lyrics. Sparser, but barely less accomplished than the full track.

Finally, the b-side 'A Thousand Pieces' is a little post-punk gem, a kind of simpler song but no less emotive ('Imagine how a father feels/to witness his son in a fight/London hides her starry night/she covers them all up with light'). Same, but different, kind of guitar riff and this kind of sense of joyous, slightly bittersweet movement throughout the song. In it you can hear strong echoes of the Smiths or even the Clash, mixed with Editor's unsuppressable brand of soaring indie rock.

III

the art

A large part of my fascination with Editors has to do with their artwork, all of which surrounding the album An End Has A Start is done by one man, artist Idris Khan. The pictures above are to show that the quality extends beyond the vinyl releases: the CD of An End Has A Start comes in a stiff (non-standard size) booklet, with silvered lettering on the back and a suede-like material on the front (hence the finger smudges) and the disc itself in a separate wax-paper sleeve. I suppose overall it's a little pretentious, but hey, this is an art-school band after all and it's gratifying to see some thought going to rewarding the consumer's purchase of their physical product.

Regardless of what you may think of the music, I'd be interested to know how the Editors aesthetic comes across, because I know there are quite a few people who read the blog with a background in art and design:

1978 born Birmingham, lives and works in London

Khan creates multi-layered photographs, often of appropriated art and books, in a way that both augments the aura of the original and reveals the idiosyncratic trace of his own hand. Khan's work explores the history of photography and literature, the beauty of repetition and the anxieties of authorship. "it's obviously not about re-photographing the photographs to make exact copies, but to intervene and bring a spectrum of feelings - warmth, humour, anxiety - to what might otherwise be considered cool aloof image. You can see the illusion of my hand in the layering. It looks like a drawing. It's not systematic or uniform. The opacity of every layer is a different fallible, human decision".

(Idris Khan at the Victoria Miro Gallery, London)

every... Bernd & Hilla Becher Spherical Type Gasholder, 2004

(Lamda digital C print mounted on aluminium)

The architectural works are a common theme of Editors covers, and like I said before they reflect well the kind of music and especially the post-punk aesthetic: industrial, structural, yet quintessentially historic and British. This one is not on any Editors release that I know of, and indeed it looks slightly different - colder somehow, more painterly.

every... page of the Holy Koran, 2004

(Lamda digital C print mounted on aluminium)

Probably sacrilegious, but fascinating all the same and definitely introduces the ghostly aspect of these layered images, kind of like an X-ray with the stark whiteness and shaded blurs, each character multiplied hundreds (thousands?) of times.

every... William Turner postcard from Tate Britain, 2004

(Lamda digital C print mounted on aluminium)

Sheer Britishness again, and probable effrontery to an artistic institution. Turner's watercolours are themselves simultaneously vague and blurred and packed full of detail and layered meaning: interestingly, it seems to me that the piece as a whole is most evocative of his best known work, The Fighting Téméraire tugged to her last Berth to be broken up.

Struggling to Hear....After Ludwig van Beethoven Sonatas, 2005

(Lamda digital C print mounted on aluminium)

Another textual piece, but appropriately musical. Each note layered until so obscured as to seem deliberately erased...

Video 'Friday' - Editors, 'Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors' + vinyl rip

Another weekly video, a little late. The point of this feature is to add some focus and regularity to the site, as well as providing an outlet for some more up-to-date aspects of my musical taste - by providing a video of a band's music, rather than disseminating the mp3s of their work. As before, the video is at the end of the post...

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My last post was about my first LP, and this is about my first 7". In the meantime, I have actually got a turntable: an Ion ITT USB05, which allows me to directly and easily record the vinyl onto my computer. It's pretty cool, even if it has no phono output, meaning that through my computer is the only way I can listen to the records, but that's not too much of a big deal.

Anyway, here's what I've bought so far:

Sonic Youth - Rather Ripped (LP) [by far the best cover art of the lot, and very distinct from the CD version too]

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Show Your Bones (LP)

Dinosaur Jr. - 'Been There All The Time'/'Back to Your Heart' (UK 7" single)

Editors - 'Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors' (7" Single)

P.J. Harvey - White Chalk (LP) [her latest album, plays at 45 rpm for some unknown reason]

Patti Smith - Horses (LP) [partly for the Robert Mapplethorpe photography]

The Boom - Movin' Out (LP)

Shooting At Unarmed Men - 'Girls Music'/'Weapons of Mass Production' (promo 7" single) [ex-Mclusky]

Fight Like Apes - The Two EPs (LP) [in proper DIY fashion, the labels for each side are the wrong way round]

Slint - Spiderland (LP)

I'm also rocking Joe Lally's first solo album, There To Here, on loan from a friend (in return for the YYY's LP and a promise not to take off the sticker yet), and I have Radio Flyer's In Their Strange White Armour on order from Polyvinyl. Toying with the idea of getting the HWM compilation (finally out!) from No Idea... it's on coloured vinyl apparently. And if I get that, I'll have to get A Flight and A Crash, and perhaps Forever and Counting...

(My loyalty card from Road Records. I bought most of the new releases from Tower, and the Patti Smith from another independent store, but any shop that blasts Minor Threat on a weekday afternoon and has a sticker that says "No home should be without this album" on the cover of Spiderland, deserves especial patronage.)

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Editors, if you haven't heard of them, are a pretty successful UK indie/post punk band. A little (or, perhaps, a lot) like a kind of British Interpol. I mainly like them for their particularly distinctive guitar sound which was succinctly explained by one Phantom DJ as:

"Play a high note, stick a lot of delay on it, and... uh... yeah, that's pretty much it"

I don't own anything else by them, neither their debut album The Back Room or their current release, An End Has A Start, so 'Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors' is on its own for the moment. (It's also the only piece of vinyl I don't already have digital copies of, so I'll try out my recording/encoding software and probably post the result here).

Useless fact: 'Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors' went to #39 on the Irish singles chart (#7 in the UK, and #18 in the UK download chart). Seriously, does anyone even care anymore?

Editors - Wikipedia

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Like I said before, a large part of the reason for going vinyl (or at least, one of the major advantages) is the quality of cover art. The Editors' design in general is very classy, but to get this graphic on a seven-inch plus wide sleeve of card is particularly cool. A bit like the Hoover/Regulator Watts industrial design aesthetic that started off my series of posts on art (and now, it's spread to Zen Face too), Editors' latest releases take a steely architectural theme - the album has a similarly styled picture of a gasometer ring. The monochrome, simultaneously soft- and hard-edged look I think really suits their sound. More than that, though, the text conveys their artistic message pretty well: clear, crisp, spacious, and sharply - and geometrically, but not unfeelingly - lined.

Personally, I think this photograph looks a lot like a dandelion head (and I have a photo of my own to prove it), but I don't find that gets in the way of my appreciation of it; in fact, it makes it quirky and even more interesting.

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01 - Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors

02 - Some Kind of Spark

Kitchenware Records, 2007: SKX932

Download

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The video: young girl runs out of hospital, gets chased around various urban scenes, bloke from the band wanders out of rehearsal room and finds girl on rooftop... the usual story. Oh, and the girl walks on water at the end - very Jesus Christ/Zhang Yimou...