Editors w/ Cold Cave – The Corn Exchange, Cambridge 17/3/2010

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Witnessing The Strange Death Of Liberal England grow into their performance is an odd experience. At first glance, this quirky collective of musicians before us seem a little lost – separated from each other, each band member happily occupies his or her own space – but as they familiarise themselves with the atmosphere and their surroundings, they begin to relax and move around. The pneumatic drumbeat that they hide behind is the pacesetter for the whole evening and their harmonies flutter about prettily above it. The downside is the gauche frontman’s tendency to overstate his place by letting rip a seemingly uncontrollable vocal that jumps octaves in all the wrong places.

Kicking off with electropop before melting away into a wicked synth-driven mix of dance and darkwave, Manhattan-residents Cold Cave are probably the perfect band to be touring with Editors. Their teeth-chattering basslines combine with an imaginative concoction of live and sampled percussion to create a sound that is effortlessly uplifting yet devilishly innovative. Each song begins with a startlingly loud smack of feedback and white noise which burns a disorienting path across the senses. Only the band’s reluctance to interact is what’s lacking (vocalist Wesley Eisold seemingly refuses to show us anything other than his left-side); that, and the cold blue light which bathes the quartet from beginning to end are the passive barriers that stops the crowd really letting go.

Seeing Editors perform their synth-infested, infinitely bleaker third album, intercut with older material, is a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. One minute we’re thrilled and empowered by thumping tracks like ‘The Racing Rats’ and ‘Munich’ and next we’re being impaled upon the heart-wrenching slog of gloom-dwelling laments like ‘You Don’t Know Love’ or ‘The Big Exit’. Certainly the former style is far easier to swallow than the latter – the faithful pogo and batter out metronomic handclaps with the echoic tempos.

Frontman Tom Smith is still as constricted as usual, curled up tight, collar up around his ears, seemingly hiding from the bitter reality of performing. His luxuriant, drawn vocal ekes from his lips; the emotion draining from him in pained stretches. Yet, he is a blur of movement as he switches from lead mic to battering a tiny keyboard before frantically tearing at the strings of his guitar. Behind him, crackling images appear in hanging picture frames almost like they are displaying the electricity that seems to course around within him. Yet the moments that really drive this show encircle him, supporting his outwardly fragile demeanour – the robust basswork of Russell Leetch, the gunpowder kit of drummer Ed Lay and the rarefied, but still sublime, top-end hooks of guitarist Chris Urbanowicz.

Still, lashings of echo and sustain have never really been able to fully conceal Editors’ weaker moments, but tonight it’s the fire alarm, drowning out Tom’s delicate piano as he performs ‘No Sound But The Wind’, that really spoils the show. One ham-fisted evacuation by over zealous staff later and we call it a day, sans their planned hook-uppercut combo of ‘Bricks & Mortar’ and ‘Papillon’, feeling oddly underwhelmed.

Photos by Rich E