The Editors: In This Light and On This Evening

I'm a big fan of the Editors. Now, they don't particularly offer anything original in their music - you can trace their lineage back to early Echo and the Bunnymen, Joy Division and Wire without using any imagination at all. Yet their lack or originality doesn't change the fact that in this day and age, when indie music is the trite warblings of Coldplay or Keane, that they sound different. They have an edgy passion to their music that is seldom seen in this, the age of the anodyne. And their music is far more immediate and urgent than the endless chin-stroking of, say, Radiohead.

Their new album is something of a departure. It loses a lot of the spiky guitar and edgy post-punk sound that defined so much of their first two efforts. Instead we have a prevalence of synths and mechanised drumbeats. It isn't the first time that a indie guitar band has gone in a more synthetic direction this year - witness the Franz Ferdinand album - but it is clear to me at least that the Editors succeed where Franz Ferdinand failed.

The reason is simple. Franz Ferdinand are no more original that the Editors, and both fell back on other influences to help them craft their third albums. Yet the Editors fell back on far more interesting influences than Franz Ferdinand. You can here the impact of "Closer" era Joy Division, and decent Depeche Mode, and Kraftwerk on the Editors' album. Whereas, Franz Ferdinand's work comes across as a cross between Girls Aloud and an unusually lusty version of the Bay City Rollers.

Ultimately, the Editors are a very derivative band. But what they continually show is that if you are going to be derivative, it is best to be derivative of the most interesting bands.