Editors - Surface, Echo & Sound

After EBM, the 2022 album built with electronic producer Benjamin John Power (aka Blanck Mass), nobody expected Editors' next move to start with a mandolin. For their eighth album, the band stopped making records inside the studio. In summer 2025 they set up on a small industrial estate in rural Gloucestershire and played the songs together in one room, facing each other the way they did in their early Stafford practice-room days. Tom Smith sums up the change: "It was pretty much the opposite of being in Berghain!"

Smith brought in songs written the same stripped-back, acoustic way as his 2025 solo record There Is Nothing In The Dark That Isn't There In The Light, and the band worked them out together in real time. Mandolin and acoustic guitar drive the album, often setting the rhythm as much as the drums do. Guitarist Justin Lockey recorded and produced the sessions. Lead single "Call It In" and the euphoric "The Rush" show where the band has landed: still big, still aching, but warmer and more human. Smith describes "The Rush" as two people talking about life, drinking and getting through the hard times together, and finding comfort in the people closest to you comes up again and again across the album's eleven tracks.

Twenty years after The Back Room, Editors have made their most organic record in more than a decade. They keep the drama and big choruses fans love and play it all from the floor up.

Released on Play It Again Sam, this LP is out October 30, 2026. It's an essential pickup for longtime fans and a good way in for anyone who lost track of the band after their synth era.