E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

Editors (pictured) burst onto the scene in the last few years as the band that sounded most like Joy Division , other than Interpol . Their highly-anticipated second album was recently released. Eyewear had been very hopeful it would be even better than their haunting, morbid first album. The current English guitar band style is, broadly-speaking, to be angular and anguished - and always anthemic - this period style starting with Radiohead , moving to Coldplay , and then erupting in a variety of bands like Franz Ferdinand , Snow Patrol , and now Editors. This English Line of moody, introspective, yet ringing bands is perhaps inspired by U2 (though often borrowing heavily from great unsung Simple Minds ). The new album under discussion here, is ten songs that each lay claim to being stirring and existential. Most are about air disasters, imminent death of loved ones and one's self, and the general morbidity of late capitalist society. The songs are propelled by dramatic drums and...

If the 00s have one house style - the 70s had Disco and Punk so the first decade of the 21st century might have many - it could just be coming to a head with the band Editors , pictured, whose second collection is out June 25 - see link for the first single from the album. Call it "black transcendence" or "gritty lyricism" or "dark epiphany" or simply Joy Division gets Simple Minded - but it is a style pioneered by Coldplay recently, and one that apparently Interpol will assay soon as well. It's curiously English - after all, in poetry, 1940s romantic modernism (my term) encompassed the war and austerity years and a soaring eloquence. The same admixture of stark, unblinkered gloom and uplifting bells and choirs seems to be what's on offer now from Editors, too. I'm looking forward to hearing the whole. I hope they get the balance right. Dancing with tears in one's eyes can be a somewhat mixed blessing... http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/mpd/p...

Editors are a new-alternative Birmingham band, who have, aptly, released their latest single, "Munich", yesterday (January 2, 2006) - in the stark dead zone of the new year - just when Spielberg's new film, Munich , is soon to open. "Munich" - though good - isn't actually one of the four or so stand-out tracks on the album The Back Room - those would be: "Lights", "All Sparks", "Bullets" and "Open Your Arms". It is, however, thrillingly derivative of New York's Interpol , by way of the starkest of them all, Joy Division (a personal favourite of mine). My brother, who used to run an indie label, worked with some of the Interpol lads, I believe, when they were called Flashlight . At any rate, their first album was an exquisite homage to a particular time and place not their own. Editors are inexplicable, which is not the same thing as being unjustifiable, except in the context of the moment, which is, barely, i...