Editors @ Birmingham Carling Academy

Mar 4 2006 By Anna Jeys, Birmingham Mail

IT was a different band that took to the stage at the Academy last night than the unassuming lads that paid a visit to the Kerrang studios earlier in the day.

Weighed down with self-confessed hangovers and in such an intimate atmosphere, Editors played a good acoustic set but with a mellow and shy quality at the Lionel Street radio studios.

But it was when the adopted Birmingham band got to let themselves go in an electric set at the Carling Academy that they seemed most at home.

The hotly-tipped four-piece, who hail from Solihull, Stroud, Nottingham and Ipswich, became the adopted sons of Birmingham when they set up home in Kings Heath after meeting

at Stafford University. And it seemed they wanted to pay back their Brummie fans for giving them a leg up to stardom by playing their biggest headline gig yet in the city.

With a good debut album under their belt, The Back Room, it was disappointing that parts of the gig were a little bland and some of the tracks sounded too similar for a live set.

But the gig hung on the likes of cracking tracks Munich, Bullets, Blood and a brilliant close to the set with Fingers in the Factories.

The band have some great tracks behind them and have the potential to be something special but are still a little rough around the edges, although they are still in their infancy.

With frontman Tom Smith's unique vocals and a good chemistry to see them through, it was definitely a case of watch this space.