TOM SMITH - There Is Nothing In The Dark That Isn’t There In The Light

Twenty years after the debut of Editors, Tom Smith opts for a sidestep that carries nothing of a breakaway gesture. This solo debut isn't born of a desire to flee the band – alive and active as ever – but of the urge to bring the original core of his songwriting back into focus. Ideas sketched out as far back as ten years ago, left suspended between tours and sonic transformations, finally take on a finished shape. After "EBM", where Smith felt less central than usual, and after the rarefied time of the pandemic, the idea crystallises into a blunt question: "If I don't do it now, will I ever?". Even an attempt to revive the Smith & Burrows project ends up clarifying the opposite direction: what's needed here is something less "paired-up", less negotiated, closer to the zero point of the songs.

The album's title, taken from the track "Deep Dive", is already a statement in itself: what we fear in the dark is part of the very same light that accompanies us. It's a record that looks inward without masks, turning the present – noisy, relentless – into a place to seek connection rather than refuge. Smith regards it as the most sincere album of his career, and you can feel it right away: the theatrical ambiguity of Editors gives way to an adult candour, an intimacy that needs no staging.

Anyone expecting a record built to showcase his famous vocal range (4.75 octaves, as noted by the Daily Mirror back in 2014) will be surprised: here the voice is exposed, fragile, nuanced. It doesn't aim to impress, but to tell a story. The arrangements stay close to the core – guitar, piano, measured strings, cinematic touches, horns only when needed – because, once you strip away volume and theatrics, there's nowhere left to hide.

Crucial to the project was the encounter with Iain Archer (Snow Patrol, Jake Bugg, James Bay; a two-time Ivor Novello Award winner): more than a producer, a critical companion who pushed Smith to rewrite, trim, and discard. The work proceeded in blocks, two or three days at a time, interspersed with tours and returns: a stop-and-start process that let the songs settle and sharpened their emotional weight. Only afterwards did targeted contributions from other musicians come in: that's how "Leave", the album's one genuine rock outburst, ends up sounding like a truly sudden opening without betraying the record's overall tone.

"Deep Dive" becomes the record's emotional compass: loneliness turning into shared connection, the sense of being accompanied even when the world feels distant. Beneath the surface you can also sense a kinship of spirit with the Rem Smith loves so much (with "Automatic For The People" as a threshold record). There's no formal quotation, but in the fragility of the voice, the acoustic care, that way of letting places speak as inner mirrors, the echo is very strong.

Within the album, two symbolic poles recurring in Smith's poetics can be recognised: light and noise. In Editors, noise was often the turmoil of the world and the mind, while light was a revealing flash. Here the contrast settles differently: noise stays in the background, and light becomes a space of clarity and truth. The songs aren't diary entries, but they are intensely autobiographical in emotional substance: "How Many Times" uses London as a living memory; "Endings Are Breaking My Heart" turns a catalogue of endings into a hushed hymn to fleeting beauty; "Broken Time" lives on subtraction and silences; "Life Is For Living" builds through carefully calibrated orchestration, without ever tipping into triumphalism.

Among the album's high points is "Souls": near-chaotic energy and a direct chorus that turns disorientation into a gesture of solidarity. "Lights Of New York City" lights up a freezing night with a muted trumpet, using New York as a symbol of time slipping by. "Northern Line" is the most explicit confession here: friendships (Andy Burrows), pubs, streets, and the impossibility of truly returning to who we once were. "Saturday" closes things in a shy, tender way: piano, voice, a "talk to me" that leaves a light on, like the end of the night with the lamps turned down low.

The clearest confirmation of this choice also lies outside the record itself. Smith plays these songs live in acoustic form, in small venues, with very few crutches to lean on. And he admits that scares him more than a big stage with Editors, because there you can rely on the volume and the machinery of the show; here you can't. Here there's only the song, and the person singing it.

“There Is Nothing In The Dark That Isn’t There In The Light” is the album Smith had been chasing without rushing, letting it mature over a long time. It's neither a farewell to Editors nor a new beginning: it's a parallel line, a branch opening up to let a grown artist speak with the most honest voice of his career. A record that demands silence and attention, and repays it with depth and beauty without ever raising its voice – because it doesn't need to.

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10/01/2026