STILL THE RULERS OF THEIR WORLD
Tears For Fears The Tipping Point
Out Friday HHHHH Wolf Alice
Barrowland Ballroom, Glasgow
Touring until March 9 HHHHH
There’s an art to making a comeback, and half of it is in the timing. Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal (above) of Tears For Fears seem to have got it just right.
Their stock has been risingsteadily for years. Their signature tune, Everybody Wants To Rule The World, has become a classic, played 700million times on
Spotify. Their other masterpiece, Mad World, has reappeared as a Christmas No1 (in 2003, when Gary Jules reinvented it for the film Donnie Darko) and a YouTube sensation – in 2020, when Smith turned it into a touching duet with his daughter Diva.
Tears For Fears’ music has been covered by Lorde, heard in The Hunger Games and sampled by Kanye West. The wheel of fashion has turned, taking their 1980s heyday from a laughing stock to an influence on today’s stars.
Now, after a 17-year gap, Smith and Orzabal have made a new album. Fans who glance at the track listing online may be disappointed: gone are the leisurely titles that used to be one of their trademarks.
As soon as you press play, though, a sound rings out that could only be Tears For Fears.
It’s both acoustic and electronic, simple and sophisticated, philosophical and emotional.
It’s pop, but also rock. Orzabal does most of the songwriting and, after a torrid time in which he lost his first wife and found love again, he has plenty to say.
The bands Tears For Fears once bumped into at Top Of The Pops now go on tour together, dishingup feasts of 1980s nostalgia.
Smith and Orzabal won’t play that game because they don’t feel
their music belongs to the 1980s.
And they have a point: their old hits are steeped in the 1960s and 1970s, and so are these ten new songs.
As Paul McCartney shows with every album he releases, a gift for melody doesn’t go away. Nor does craftsmanship, and Smith and Orzabal, both 60, are still good at building drama with changes of pace. Tears For Fears know how to go through the gears.
On an album with no weak links, the highlights – Master Plan and
End Of Night – are shrewdly held back for the last 15 minutes. Both are big, urgent and instantly
compelling. If they don’t become hits, the Official Charts Company may as well pack up and go home.
In Glasgow last week I saw something that’s supposed to be an endangered species: a young rock band. If so, nobody told Wolf Alice, who have just followed a No 1 album, Blue Weekend, with the Best Group award at the Brits.
Music-lovers are in the mood for fun and this bunch know how to provide it. The bass player,
Theo Ellis, whips up an all-ages crowd, while Joff Oddie, on guitar, supplies edgy riffs. The singer, Ellie Rowsell (below), brings a discreet glamour and a voice that can go from a whisper to a roar. The songs are eclectic, rangingfrom punk to pensive ballads, but they all have huge choruses.