Looook into Tom Smith's eyes



Editors’ jarring guitar riffs and stomping drums begged for me to bring my best white-girl shimmy to the sold-out Vic Friday night. Imagine my disappointment, then, when the U.K quartet took the stage and the audience continued to… sit (and the general admission crowd that packed the floor wasn’t movin’ too much, either).

But that’s OK. As soon as the opening razor-sharp guitars of “Bones” filled the auditorium, cheers rang out and joined Tom Smith’s rich, deep, clear voice: “In the end all you can hope for / Is the love you felt to equal the pain you’ve gone through.”

Smith, guitarist Chris Urbanowicz, bassist Russell Leetch and drummer Ed Lay immediately lost themselves in the music, each occupying their own patch of stage, completely absorbed (Urbanowicz in particular has mastered a charming pigeon-toed, knee-bend of a dance; Smith channeled a sexier Chris Martin, climbing on and otherwise pawing his piano or twirling around with his guitar in socked feet) -- and thus absorbing. Combining songs from their 2005 debut The Back Room and last July’s And End Has A Start, Editors played most of their singles, closing with their biggest hit, the melancholy “Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors,” and urgent “Fingers in the Factories.” By the end of the night, the guy in front of me was pumping his fist occasionally and sometimes swaying back and forth. Clearly he’d brought his white-boy shimmy but was held back by the blasé crowd, too. Next time, Editors. Next time. – Kim Jeffries