DESCRIPTION:
'The Racing Rats' is the third single from the Editor's An End Has A Start and is quite similar to 'Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors': slow, heavy rhythm alternating with frantic, high-pitched guitar. It's a good song, very effective and even a little dancey in parts. And it's got that one line that sounds really profound even when you haven't worked out what it means yet, 'If a plane were to fall from the sky/How big a hole would it leave/In the surface of the earth?'

'Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors' works very well as a live recording, too. Here the crystalline guitar is heard less flawlessly than on the album or single recording, which even gives it more feeling. Obviously 'The Racing Rats' and 'Smoking Outside The Hospital Doors' make a good pairing. Both the live recordings are of very good quality and any differences only add to the feel of the songs.

Conversely, the sparse sound of the demo 'Racing Rats', consists mainly (but not, I think, entirely) the vocals and piano of lead singer Tom Smith. Somehow, hearing the song devoid of the trademark post-punk revival guitar sound of Editors heightens the intensity of the rhythm and the lyrics. Sparser, but barely less accomplished than the full track.

Finally, the b-side 'A Thousand Pieces' is a little post-punk gem, a kind of simpler song but no less emotive ('Imagine how a father feels/to witness his son in a fight/London hides her starry night/she covers them all up with light'). Same, but different, kind of guitar riff and this kind of sense of joyous, slightly bittersweet movement throughout the song. In it you can hear strong echoes of the Smiths or even the Clash, mixed with Editor's unsuppressable brand of soaring indie rock.