Editors release acoustic version of ‘Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors’
I am LOVING this new version and how the strings perfectly intertwine with the lush piano keys, creating quite a beautiful soundscape! I am a sucker for raw, stripped-down music and this version is packed with so much emotion and allows those vocals to soar.
2007's 'Smokers Outside The Hospital Doors' is the band's highest-charting UK single and the Distance version is a fresh take on the classic indie rock anthem. Replacing Chris Urbanowicz's energetic lead guitar with soft acoustic strumming, gentle piano and melancholy strings, the Distance version is a hauntingly beautiful ballad that retains the emotional intensity at the core of the original, with Tom Smith's inimitable vocals soaring above the sensuous arrangement. Check it out below!
Remembering the creation of the original, Smith explains:
I remember looking out the back of a van on tour somewhere in England, and saw a group of smokers outside a hospital. I wrote down the observation my notebook. Then later, coming to write songs, there were a few things going on in my life, people around me getting poorly - older people - for the first time. So a lot of the songs were fixated on mortality. And to have that title on this big, grand indie-rock song and have that land in the Top Ten, was interesting.
Black Gold will arrive on October 25th and consists of 13 tracks from Editors 6 studio albums, alongside 3 brand new offerings, also comes in a deluxe 2CD version, including a second disc of 8 stripped back recordings of tracks from the band's catalogue titled 'Distance: The Acoustic Recordings'.