TOM-SMITH-There-Is-Nothing-In-The-Dark-That-Isnt-There-In-The-Light-album-2025
There is a precise moment in every frontman's career in which he feels the physiological urgency to come out into the open, erase his alter ego to show the essence of his being.
Tom Smith, voice and backbone of the Editors, took twenty years to achieve this dispossession. “There Is Nothing In The Dark That Isn't There In The Light” is the result of this process, his solo debut.
A record that is not yet another exercise in “guitar and voice” style but is an act of brutal honesty, a record that refuses the protection of the band's wall of sound to embrace a delicate vulnerability and fragility perhaps generated by the inevitable mid-life crisis.
Far from the post-punk and gothic geometries of the Editors and aided by the production of Iain Archer, Smith enters a dimension with a folk and lo-fi sound framework.
The sound system is built to enhance that baritone that has acted as a shield for two decades and here, finally, it is left to vibrate without filters.
The opening with Deep Dive it is programmatic: the album title is a phrase taken from this song, a mantra that attempts to exorcise the ancestral fear of the dark by rationalizing it. Musically we are on the side of a less cryptic Nick Drake, passing through cinematic openings and an aftertaste of optimism and brazen hope.
Pieces like Lights of New York City with that ghostly trumpet that dominates and the piano that surrounds it and Northern Line they show a delightful classicism that offer magic while closing with Saturday it is the emotional summit of the work: a bittersweet farewell, a snapshot of fleeting intimacy.
“There Is Nothing In The Dark That Isn't There In The Light” is a necessary record, especially for Smith. For us who listen, it is confirmation that even the dark knights of post-punk ultimately need to turn on the light.
SCORE: 7.50
TO LISTEN NOW
Lights Of New York City – Leave – Saturday
TO BE SKIPPED IMMEDIATELY
39 minutes of calm, tranquility and introspection to be savored slowly!
TRACKLIST
Deep Dive
How Many Times
Endings Are Breaking My Heart
Life Is For Living
Broken Time
Lights Of New York City
Souls
Northern Line
Leave
Saturday
THE DISCOGRAPHY
2025 – There Is Nothing In The Dark That Isn't There In The Light
