Editors: “I don't think the record really sounds like any other band in what we've done”

Despite a Mercury Music Prize nomination, two number one albums and two platinum records, Editors have rarely found favour with alternative music critics. As an isolated case, it’s possibly understandable – the influences in their work are anything less than subtle and their sound has admittedly diluted over time, but when set alongside feted acts like Kasabian and the practically self-parodic Franz Ferdinand, they seem to have done very little wrong in comparison.

A great deal of dislike for the band seems to come from singer Tom Smith’s relationship with Edith Bowman, which, again, is an argument it’s easy to see both sides of – their liaison should be entirely inconsequential to listeners’ appreciation of their music, but on the other hand, it grates like ragged nails down a blackboard whenever you see Bowman on the BBC3 festival couch hailing them the best band in the world.

Laura Snapes caught up with bassist Russell Leetch to get his take on the haters, their spot on the New Moon OST and their new single.

Amidst the good reviews of your album, many of the bad ones have taken quite personal swipes at Tom’s life – is that what you’re referring to when you’ve said in the past that you prefer the European music press?
In the UK people are so obsessed with celebrity and celebrity culture. We just don’t give a shit about that, and to make accusations about people that are very private or to attack someone’s integrity is an insult that we don’t like, the UK is obsessed with that and we prefer places that just listen to us as a band without anything else hindering.

It’s interesting that people make such personal attacks about an album whose lyrics are rooted in observing other people and making up characters. Where did those characters come from? They’re very obliquely constructed.
Quite. It’s not about the writer’s life this time and more creating stories in a third person narrative. A lot of this came from London and living in London. It has become the concept on this record.

‘No Sound But The Wind’ was originally inspired by The Road – was it how you imagined the soundtrack to be, or a musical response to the plot of the novel, and did you have any qualms about putting it on the soundtrack for a teen phenomenon film? Was becoming known to an American audience a concern?
The song at first wasn’t soundtracking the novel. It was written about the power of the book and basing it on the characters in it. When we were approached about using the song on a different film we weren’t sure at first especially with how literal some of the lyrics were. Tom decided to have a re-think about some of the lyrics in the song and it seemed to work better! The soundtrack has seemed like a good thing to be involved in and if a younger US audience gets into the band because of that then that has to be a good thing.

It’s been interesting reading the motivations from each artist who’s contributed to the New Moon OST, and I’ve read in the past that you’d never consider giving your song to an advert. What makes this different? It’s still a huge commercial thing.
I think movies are a very different thing to adverts. We’ve always been fans of movies as an art form. We have never been fans of adverts and the thought of putting music on for usually a lot of money and to be associated with a product just doesn’t fit well.

Have you listened to the other bands on the OST or seen the film?
We are yet to see the film but have heard some of the soundtrack. We are all fans of Grizzly Bear and Bon Iver. I thought the Lykke Li song was fantastic.

Did your influences change? There seems to be a very literary bent to parts of the record, the song originally written with The Road in mind, the title of ‘Papillon’ etc. What were you reading at the time of recording?
I think literacy has always been part of the band, with some references not so obvious, or it may be the case that we just haven’t told anybody about references before. I don’t think anybody was really reading in the studio as such as we were just wrapped up in the making of the record. ‘Papillon’ has a passing reference to the film based on the Henri Charriere’s novel. It’s not really just about that, but a line in the song does have reference to that book/film. I think the song is one of the most obvious dance singles we’ve ever written and the most obvious on the album so it felt right to put it out.

How did the Tiesto remix come about? He’s been feted by a lot of indie bands recently, which seems quite strange…
Yeah, he is the dance remix king of indie bands. We have liked what Tiesto does for quite some time and it’s always fun for someone at the top of their game to make a dance anthem out of one of our tunes.

Do you know which you’ll be releasing next?
I think the next single will be ‘You Don’t know Love’.

Tell us about the Google Street View project you did to launch the album – whose idea was it, how and why did you do it?
This was a Sony idea. It was their creative department, it seemed like a good way for people to hear the album – we were just annoyed that it didn’t come out just before!

From reading past interviews, it always seems as though there’s an element of uncertainty before you start recording a record, what gave you the impetus to make this one now? How much reassurance did Flood provide?
Flood was very confident in the songs and this confidence rubbed off on us. I don’t think we were uncertain about the songs I think just in the style that we were going to record them. We’ve always been self confident as a band and if we weren’t we wouldn’t have made the record at that time.

It’s quite short in terms of the number of tracks – why nine?
Yes, it’s quite short in the number of tracks but not in length. Anyway, lots of great records have nine songs on them. When we were trying to sort out the running order of the songs it was hard to sort out as we had lots of tracks recorded and putting them in an order that worked took a lot of time to get the flow right.

I read that at one stage there was going to be a children’s choir on the record – what happened with that?
We had the idea for ‘Bricks and Mortar’ but it didn’t work out.

‘Eat Raw Meat = Blood Drool’ – the title reminds me a bit of Radiohead, of Stanley Donwood and Dr Chock’s sloganeering. You’ve mentioned that it’s a ludicrous pop moment – is it supposed to serve as an alleviation from the at times more difficult sounds present elsewhere?
I guess it’s us having fun, being slightly cheeky and doing something playful. We’ve always liked opposites and having a ridiculous title for a very pop song made us at least chuckle!

Guitar bands taking a synth direction isn’t anything particularly new, this year in particular – what makes what you’re doing different?
Well I don’t think the record really sounds like any other band in what we’ve done. There is definitely a grit and a roughness to the synths rather than sheen and crispness, which we could have gone for. We just wanted to try something a little different and to write on different instruments, and this is the result.

How does it work live, switching between the old and new material? Have you reworked the older stuff on synths?
We haven’t reworked the older material on synths, we just play it how it was written and recorded. I think it would be dangerous to reinterpret the songs in a different format. The old and new songs really balance well and give the set a good balance.

Is there a new group dynamic? Russell in particular seemed to have more backing vocals on Papillon – did you have to re-evaluate your performance style a lot? And Ed, I’d imagine there’s a lot more to do now?
There is definitely more things for each member to do on stage. Ed’s got a load of triggers and samples to change and play at various points in the set, I’m singing more and Chris has a whole new world to play with.

What exactly is your relationship with Kitchenware now? I heard that you won the company in an arm wrestling match?!
The band is signed to Kitchenware. I do technically own Kitchenware but keep Keith Armstrong running it.

What are you all listening to at the moment? I noticed the Mobius Band are your top Myspace friend – are they a band you’ve encountered in New York?
We’ve toured with Mobius Band many times and they are a great bunch of people and musicians. We love their music. Other bands that we’ve been listening to at the moment are The Antlers, Doves, Doveman and Grizzly Bear.

What with three of the band living in New York, is that an indication that you’re going to be trying to break America? Have you toured there much before?
We’ve toured there a lot. It’s such a big place and every town is so different and far apart it is hard ‘to break’. We’ll continue going there but who knows if it will be as successful as other places!

There’s a huge scene built up around Brooklyn – do you get to check out many bands?
When I’m there I do really like going to gigs. There are some awesome spots to play and to check out bands, Union Hall is great in South Brooklyn.