The best Tears for Fears songs have a dramatic flair and a way of getting under your skin, and even though it\u2019s been 17 years since their last \u201creunion\u201d project, the band\u2019s newest album shows they can still write solid, thoughtful, dark, dramatic synth-pop with a modern flair.<\/p>\n
A quick recap of the story: The core duo of TFF\u2014Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith\u2014split unhappily in 1991 after Sowing the Seeds of Love<\/i> and the attendant hit single title track, with Orzabal making two more albums under the TFF name, one good and one lacking. A \u201creunion\u201d disc happened in 2004 to little fanfare, but nothing much came after that for more than a decade. Then in 2017 Orzabal\u2019s wife Caroline passed away, and the Smith\/Orzabal duo was reborn out of a shared need to write together (and, apparently, some post-rehab revelations by Orzabal). The pandemic gave them a great reason to hunker down together and complete a new album.<\/p>\n
The angsty, emotional spirit that fueled the band\u2019s songwriting is still here, but now comes with the weight of a life lived, of a loved one lost, of being able to see the world for what it is instead of what it could be. As with many albums by middle-aged artists, there\u2019s an air of contentment that wasn\u2019t around in 1983, but there\u2019s also an import of knowledge; songs like \u201cPlease Be Happy\u201d and \u201cThe Tipping Point\u201d are reflections of the experience of watching your wife of 35 years succumb to depression and dementia.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not to say this is a depressing album\u2014far from it. Sadness is certainly woven through the songs, as is hope (the topical \u201cRivers Of Mercy\u201d and the smash-the-patriarchy anthem \u201cBreak The Man\u201d), righteous anger (\u201cMaster Plan,\u201d a swipe at their old management) and loyalty to something that\u2019s difficult to give up (\u201cStay,\u201d the only song here to appear somewhere else prior). As with any Tears for Fears album, the songs and production are elegant and reward repeated listens.<\/p>\n
While the band\u2019s dark synth-pop and multi-tracked vocal sound is the spine of the music, there are modern indie-rock flourishes to \u201cLong, Long, Long Time\u201d that try to bring the sound current. \u201cNo Small Thing,\u201d a celebration of freedom, unusually starts with an acoustic guitar and slowly builds to an anthemic chorus and climax. \u201cThe Tipping Point,\u201d \u201cBreak The Man\u201d and \u201cEnd Of Night\u201d probably sound the most like classic TFF, when Smith was more involved in the singing and songwriting, and if anything on here was going to be a hit single it would be the title track.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy Demons\u201d is something of an oddity, clearly an Orzabal-written track with a robotic staccato verse spitting out vivid imagery and a catchy chorus; though I\u2019m not sure what it\u2019s supposed to be about, it sounds cool. It\u2019s the flip side of the brooding but uplifting \u201cRivers Of Mercy,\u201d which touches on political and social strife with some lovely singing; it\u2019s not far removed from Seeds Of Love<\/i>. \u201cPlease Be Happy\u201d is a tough listen, a lovely and soaring three-minute song with real-world pain behind it. It\u2019s almost heartbreaking, but it needed to be said. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s the biggest thing about The Tipping Point, <\/i>that feeling that these lyrics and this music something its creators needed <\/i>to make. They could have kept touring and playing the same old \u201980s hits, or they could have moved on to something else, or they could have teamed with modern hitmakers (which didn\u2019t go well the first time they tried) to score a hit single. But none of that is at play here, and that makes this a refreshing, involving 42 minutes of music. No, it\u2019s not as catchy as the best of Songs From The Big Chair <\/i>or as self-involvingly dramatic as the best of The Hurting<\/i>, but it\u2019s of a piece with both of those albums, and fans will welcome this with open arms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":34476,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6318],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-46318","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-tears-for-fears","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/46318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=46318"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=46318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}