Editors: 'The Racing Rats'

2007 was supposed to be the year Editors did 'a Coldplay'. The euphemism that refers to exploding into the big time (rather than marrying off to Hollywood A-listers, giving your children daft names and making mawkish ballads) was lauded upon Tom Smith and co, but unfortunately it seems to have weighed down their progress rather than help them excel into the big league. An End Has A Start, the follow-up to their slow-burn hit The Back Room, debuted at number one in the summer, but the single of the same name only just scraped the top 30 and their summer festival appearances were muted and unspectacular affairs. Their gloomy, murky bedroom anthems are uncompromising, atmospheric and delightfully dark, but unfortunately chart hits they do not always make.

Their third single from the album, the stereotypically haunting, piano-led anthem is perhaps an explanation of why the band haven't reached the heady heights of that 'Yellow' band. Smith's sparse and glum vocal style is straight from the Joy Division textbook and certainly doesn't fit in with the cosy, Starbucks anthems found on A Rush Of Blood To The Head or X + Y. Meanwhile the clattering, desolate drum beats and spiked guitar darts is hardly the stuff of bank executives and the Radio 2 brigade. Lyrics like: "If a plane were to fall from the sky / How big a hole would it leave / In the surface of the earth" are not the sort of thing Scott Mills usually finds a place for on his setlist either. They're certainly no, "And it was all yellow!" anyway. Which is all great news for the band and this tune. But probably less so for their record company. But who cares about them?