Editors

Ever since Editors parted ways with guitarist Chris Urbanowicz in 2012, I’ve missed the interesting guitar arrangements that made me fall in love with the band.

The official reason for Chris’s departure was artistic differences. What did that really mean? The answer may lie in the band’s move towards electronic music, which began on In This Light and on This Evening and became especially clear on their last three albums. I kept following those releases and gave each one a chance. But by the time EBM arrived in 2022, with its sound dominated by industrial electronics, I felt that the band who made The Back Room were gone for good. It was especially noticeable at their shows, where the new songs felt worlds apart from Blood or The Racing Rats.

Maybe this sounds like a fan still stuck in 2007, but it looks like Editors frontman Tom Smith was also starting to miss a simpler sound. In December 2025, he unexpectedly released a solo album, full of acoustic songs that felt close to the band’s early demos and acoustic sessions from 20 years ago. Smith took the new material on tour, and watching his interviews, I felt he was in a really good place. Listening to songs like Life Is For Living and Leave, I thought they could be the starting point for a very good new Editors album.

Tom must have written more material in a similar vein, because halfway through his European tour, he surprised us again by announcing a new album with the band.

The first taste of Surface, Echo & Sound was Call It In, a single that sounds like Editors in the old days. It’s a fast-paced, three-minute guitar song with a great chorus and some lovely touches in the arrangement. Next came The Rush, just as energetic and melodic, with a distinctive mandolin part. It sounds like a nod to Peter Buck and R.E.M., a band that means a lot to Tom. After all, it was seeing them live at 15 that made him want to become a musician. He’s spoken warmly about them many times, and R.E.M. returned the love with a cover of Bullets. The final single before the album’s release, Seriously, confirmed that guitars would be at the heart of this record.

Listening to Surface, Echo & Sound, I had the same feeling I got from the latest Interpol album (read our review). Here’s a band who lost a little of their original DNA when a founding member left, then spent years experimenting before finding their way back to their old sound. And they’re all the better for it. I didn’t expect to hear three strong, guitar-driven Editors singles in 2026. Having heard the album, I’m sure More Love, driven by a pulsing bassline, and the joyful Rescue will soon join them as singles. And that’s the thing: emotionally, this record is the flip side of The Back Room, something you can already see in the song titles. Where that album was full of unease and sadness, Surface, Echo & Sound offers a healthy dose of hope. Even The Hills We Died Upon — the tearjerking ballad that no Editors album would be complete without — has something uplifting about it.

What’s missing? Something that breaks the pattern a little more. An unexpected song, like Camera on the debut, Spiders on An End Has a Start or The Weight on The Weight of Your Love. Most of the songs here follow a familiar verse–chorus structure, and we know these guys can surprise us with something less predictable. Fingers crossed they explore that side of their songwriting on the next record.

Surface, Echo & Sound is easily Editors’ most interesting and cohesive album since An End Has a Start. The guitars and the emotions that made me fall in love with this band are back.