Like an old car in winter, Formaldehyde was slow to get going. Arriving on Editors' 4th album The Weight of Your Love in 2013, the track had already been a sonic thorn-in-the-side for 4 years or more by then. The band had struggled to create an identity for it, unable to bestow it with a musical personality. It would be an unsolvable riddle for a long time until Ed approached it with a B52s style drum beat. Suddenly the cylindrical chambers that sat adjacent to each other for so long clicked into alignment, the lock opened, Formaldehyde became. It's subversive, a pop a song you can sing but whose tenebrous words you might not fully register. Also, "Formaldehyde" is a chemical ingredient in embalming fluid used to preserve the dead. Luckily the video was more upbeat...except it wasn't. A spaghetti western backdrop where a cowboy drags a coffin around. Perhaps the song was a very knowing in-joke to troll everyone who accuses them of persistent melancholy? I can only hope that's true.