Black Gold: Best Of Editors (Deluxe)

CD

1. Frankenstein
2. Papillon
3. Munich
4. Sugar
5. Hallelujah (So Low)
6. An End Has A Start
7. Upside Down
8. Bullets
9. Ocean Of The Night
10. No Harm
11. Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors
12. A Ton Of Love
13. Magazine
14. The Racing Rats
15. Black Gold
16. No Sound But The Wind

CD2

1. Violence (Distance: The Acoustic Recordings)
2. Walk The Fleet Road (Distance: The Acoustic Recordings)
3. Blood (Distance: The Acoustic Recordings)
4. Let Your Good Heart Lead You Home (Distance:  The Acoustic Recordings)
5. Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors (Distance: The Acoustic Recordings)
6. Fall (Distance: The Acoustic Recordings)
7. Two Hearted Spider (Distance: The Acoustic Recordings)
8. Distance (Distance: The Acoustic Recordings)

This past spring, Editors found themselves in a “kids’ bedroom” of a recording studio in Topanga Canyon, Los Angeles, doing what they’ve always done best: playing, in both senses of the term.

“I’ve never met a man with more hunger, capacity and appetite for music than Garrett Lee,” begins frontman and songwriter Tom Smith. “It’s so infectious, his passion. And he’s the same as he always was: constantly playing us new stuff, pulling out record after record – ‘listen to this, it’s the best thing you’ve ever heard… listen to this, it’s the best thing you’ve ever heard…’”

Smith is talking about Garrett “Jacknife” Lee, the Grammy-winning expat Irish producer (U2, Snow Patrol, REM, The Killers, The Cars) who worked with Editors to bring to life the songs on their second album. Released in 2007, An End Has a Start was a straight-in-at-Number-One triumph that featured the band’s first Top Ten single, Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors, and helped earned them a Brit Award nomination for Best British Group.

It seemed apt, then, that, 12 years later, the five-piece would return to Lee for help capping off a remarkable run of six albums. Yes, Editors were finally submitting to a Best Of…. But true to form, they’d do it their way, by including three new songs – and three new songs that were the sound of the band at their brilliant boldest.

Enter, through a door framed with fire, smoke and pounding Eighties synths, the first of those, Frankenstein. Released as a single this summer, it forcefully, joyfully demonstrated that Editors had lost none of their ambition.

“This track is quite ridiculous,” Smith cheerfully admits. “But we’ve spent so much time with every record thinking about legacy and what we’ve done before, we’ve gone past the point where we worry. Now, really, it’s about making sure we enjoy it.

“Garret helped us get that Frankie Goes To Hollywood kind of feel in the verses,” he continues of the Relax-channelling motif, “but the ridiculous chorus was always there. I like the melody, I like the shift in the chords, and I could feel that, when we played it in the festival environment, it would be a lot of fun. And even though the lyrics come from a dark place, they’re a bit more tongue-in-cheek than I normally do. It’s a song sung for outsiders, people who feel a bit different, in this weird, gothic, ridiculous pop song. And Garrett was attracted to all that. He said: ‘Be weird, be out there, this is what Editors are good at.’”

As much is obvious in Black Gold, a tight-but-expansive 16-track survey of Editors’ 15-year career. It includes the one-two opening punch of Bullets and Munich, the thrilling blasts of contrarily gothic-pop, voiced by a nape-tingling baritone, that shot Editors out of the gates. It’s rounded off with those three new tracks recorded with Lee this year: Frankenstein, the heavy funk throb of Upside Down and the nightmarish drama of the title track. And, in between, the sound of a band who’ve made a festival-headlining, chart-topping career from confounding themselves, and confounding expectations.

“Conversations about a Best Of… had been going on for the past three or four years, but it never felt like the right moment,” admits Smith. “We were always cracking on with a new album.” But singer/guitarist/pianist Smith, Russell Leetch (bass, synths) and Ed Lay (drums, percussion) had made three albums with original guitarist Chris Urbanowicz, and three with newer members Justin Lockey (guitar) and Elliott Williams (guitars, keyboards), “so it felt like a good time to do it.

“And suddenly we’re in LA with Garret, someone we had history with – he made those songs on the second record, which was a very significant album for us. And he was exactly as he was back then. And I think you can hear the playfulness and relaxed nature in the new tunes.”