Editors

EDITORS

CARLING ACADEMY, GLASGOW

AS CHRIS Martin might testify, nothing says you're an earnest musician like playing a gig at frantic, itchy-footed pace.

Editors' Tom Smith has this "so intense the music's exploding from every pore" shtick down pat, and it's really quite annoying. Which is a shame, because his band are certainly several cuts above Coldplay, and have at their disposal effect-heavy guitars and sombre vocals which benefit from not being delivered in a matey mockney style. At various points here, they called to mind U2, Echo and the Bunnymen and The Cure, reasons enough not to begrudge them a place as one of the UK's most successful bands.

They have a few stand-out tracks (All Sparks, Munich, Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors), yet others just repeat the same sound to diminishing effect. Like the strobing urban towers on their video backdrop, Editors are either a thing of Modernist beauty or an empty vessel dressed up in neon austerity. Either way, it would be easier to love them if their singer sat down.