In This Light and on This Evening

Smith wrote it about London, his adopted home, after looking out at the skyline from his house at dusk. He told SPIN it was "the moment between day and night", with a storm brewing, and that it took his breath away. The band were sure it had to open the album. It was produced by Flood and mixed by Ben Hillier and Rob Kirwan, and like the rest of the record it was tracked with the band playing together.

Previewing the album, Gigwise called it the sound of a second, new Editors. The Quietus heard its sombre, minimal build as a sign of what the rest of the record would do, Drowned in Sound an icy symphonic haze recalling Ultravox, and PopMatters likened Smith's vocal to Ian Curtis. It was never a single.

Live

The band played it in Seattle on 5 February 2009, eight months before the album came out, and opened many of their 2010 shows with it, Rock Werchter among them. setlist.fm logs 281 performances, the latest at Vorst Nationaal in Brussels in October 2022. The upload in the hypersongs web is the album version.