Editors - We Were Always Meant for This - Milan 20th October 2022 (audio)

I’m afraid I wasn’t around for this one, but luckily the unpaid guardian of Editors’ social media activities was on the case (as she usually is). Thanks again, H. You’re the best. I’ve left the recording exactly as it was on the night, as I think any tinkering with it would have only lessened the experience. Prior to this show, I think that Paris may have held the record for being the best gig on this tour. Italy may have just edged them out of the title race with this showing. The very cool Giulia Salvi was the host for this one, and that’s her you can hear throughout. Ordinarily I’d moan about the DJ chatter included in these things, but I have a lot of time for Giulia and so should you. She’s an actual genuine, no-fooling around fan of the band who went as far as to get the title of her favourite song Hyena tattooed on her right ankle. True story. She’s also appeared on a bunch of stuff here at the Archive, so she gets a free pass when it comes to speaking during the broadcast. Plus, her intros to the songs are pretty much perfectly timed throughout. The sound quality on this is stellar, and I believe this is the first professionally recorded broadcast of a full show from the October leg of the EBM tour. It sounds so, so good. The fact that it was professionally mixed by Virgin Radio Italy means you can hear so much more of what’s going on. This is the kind of thing every Editors show deserves, and I think you can sometimes judge just how loved they are in certain territories by the quality of the media coverage they get. Italy has Virgin Radio, Belgium has Stu Bru etc etc and they usually come up with something good during each tour cycle. I also believe that this was the perfect time to capture Editors live. All gigs are about synergy, and I think that Editors’ best shows have always been a factor of two things; the right fans and just the right amount of time spent on the road that’s not the case, like Werchter 2012, but more often than not it is. At Fabrique, they had both ingredients in abundance. I think you sometimes get overwhelmed by the wave of noise hitting you when you see Editors live, particularly if you allow yourself to get lost in the moment, so it’s good to be able to go back and pick over just what it was that made your soul vibrate in such a curious way. Plus this is beneficial to all those people like me who like being able to separate all the pieces that make up the puzzle of each composition, and obsess over how they accentuate or support the overall sound of the finished product. I know you’re out there. I love the way that the arpeggio on Justin’s guitar has been substituted by keys during the “Bones, starved of flesh...“ breakdown section of that song. Then you hear Mr Lockey come straight back in with that rapid back and forth playing of a single string that was probably one of the contributors to Chris’ arthritis back in the day. The outro to In This a lot bigger, so much so that it’s actually a little bit of a shock when it goes silent after it finishes. Sugar has become a much more menacing song than the one on The Weight of Your Love, especially with the crowd-baiting by Tom betweeen verses. I can hear a slight similarity to Radiohead in All Sparks, of all songs. There’s a theramin sound courtesy of J Greenwood during Where I End and You Begin, and something very close is right there in All Sparks. A great show full of energy which appears to have been passed back and forth between the band and the folks in the room for the duration of the set. Enjoy the music ;) Broadcast Setlist 00:00 Heart Attack 06:44 Strawberry Lemonade 12:35 Bones 16:58 Karma Climb 22:35 Picturesque 27:49 In This Light and on This Evening 32:40 Sugar 37:28 Magazine 41:35 All Sparks 45:27 Vibe 49:18 The Racing Rats 53:27 Frankenstein 58:05 Nothing 1:02:42 All the Kings 1:06:42 Blood 1:10:28 Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors 1:15:49 Kiss 1:24:00 No Harm 1:29:25 Strange Intimacy 1:38:00 An End Has a Start 1:42:39 Munich 1:47:15 Papillon For more Editors stuff, drop by the Archive brought to you with lots and lots of lemming-love ) x