The first sound on In This Light and on This Evening is not a guitar but a hum, a synthetic pulse that could be a city breathing. The English band Editors built their name on brooding post-punk guitars, yet their third album, released on 12 October 2009, opens with something closer to a machine. That choice set the terms for everything that followed: a record about London, made with machines, that would climb to the very top and then vanish from the conversation almost as quickly.
From guitars to Flood's machines
Editors had been a guitar band in the classic sense. Their sound belonged to the post-punk revival, full of tense riffs and anthemic darkness. For this record, the band handed production to Flood, a producer known for shaping electronic and industrial textures. The album shifted into darkwave and synth-pop territory, and frontman Tom Smith said London dominated the record both lyrically and musically. The background electronic noises, he explained, imitated the constant noise of the city.
That London is not a postcard. It is a place of glass, traffic, and surveillance, a city where, in the right light and on the right evening, even a familiar sight can startle you. The song titles read like a map of unease: 'Bricks and Mortar', 'The Big Exit', 'Eat Raw Meat = Blood Drool'. Critics heard the 1980s in the new sound, name-checking OMD, Depeche Mode, Eurythmics, and Talk Talk. For a band that had once been compared to Joy Division, this was a deliberate leap away from the past.
A 59 on Metacritic
The risk was real. Not everyone wanted the new Editors. The album landed on Metacritic with 59 out of 100, based on 25 reviews. Some outlets were generous, but others were brutal. The split was sharp: one review could praise the ambition, another could dismiss the whole thing as a cold imitation. The band had traded a sound people loved for one people argued about.
Yet the public, at first, seemed curious enough to buy it. The album debuted at the top of the UK Albums Chart. Then the fall began. In its second week it dropped from first place to 13th, and it spent only three weeks in the top 40. Editors had scored a number one album that became one of the shortest-lived chart-toppers in the country. The crown was real, but it slipped off fast.
Editors had scored a number one album that became one of the shortest-lived chart-toppers in the country.
Gold, platinum and a quiet half-life
The album still found its audience elsewhere and over time. It earned a double gold certification from the Independent Music Companies Association for sales of at least 150,000 copies in Europe, and it went gold in Britain. Belgium gave it platinum. The record's strange half-life is the point: a commercial success that could not hold the mainstream's attention, a divisive record that kept selling quietly to those who wanted its particular darkness.
It was also the end of a chapter. In This Light and on This Evening was the last Editors album with guitarist Chris Urbanowicz, who left the group in 2012. The album sits between An End Has a Start and the compilation Unedited, but it feels less like a bridge than a detour. The band would never again sound quite so willing to let the machines take over.
Perhaps that is why the album still unsettles. Editors made a record about a city that hums and glares, and they made it with the very sounds that city generates. It shot to number one and then dropped away, like a familiar sight caught in the wrong light for a moment. You notice it, you argue about it, and then the evening moves on.