Tears for Fears Alice Jones-Rodgers reviews ‘The Tipping Point’.

Tears for Fears

Emotional Overload

Alice Jones-Rodgers reviews ‘The Tipping Point’.

Eighteen years ago, Tears for Fears’ sixth album, ‘Everybody Loves a Happy Ending’ may have seen Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith reunited for the first time since 1989’s chart-topping, Platinumselling ‘The Seeds of Love’, but the further inactivity that followed led many to feel that the title of the album had been prophetic.

In 2013, however, the duo reconvened to make a follow up with, at the behest of their management, an array of contemporary co-writers and producers. A full album was recorded, but by 2016, it had been jettisoned, with Orzabal and Smith feeling that it wasn’t representative of who they were. A wise choice, we feel, because even back in the ‘80s, the decade in which they ruled the world with three massive albums (‘The Hurting’, 1983, UK#1 / US#73; ‘Songs from the Big Chair’, 1985, UK#2 / US#1 and ‘The Seeds of Love’, 1989, UK#1 / US#8) and thirteen UK top 40 singles, as well as six US Billboard Hot 100 singles (including two consecutive number ones with ‘Shout’ and ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’ in 1985), Tears for Fears were a band who never seemed particularly comfortable with playing the Pop star game in the quite the same way as their contemporaries, ploughing a much deeper furrow than most with their often dark and always densely produced explorations of the world and human psyche.

Ditching the first draft of their seventh album proved to be a pivotal point for Tears for Fears, with Orzabal and Smith going back to basics, severing ties with their management and sitting down in a room together with acoustic guitars to rediscover the joy of just writing songs without any outside interference. However, nothing in the world of Tears for Fears is straightforward and the second attempt at recording what would eventually become known as ‘The Tipping Point’, was far from plainsailing either. Five songs from the first attempt, many of which were co-written by producer Sacha Skarbek, who the band were impressed enough with to keep on for part of this version of the album, were heavily reworked, whilst over the next few years, five new songs were added. Inspiration for many of the new songs came from Orzabal dealing with the tragic death of his wife of 25 years, Caroline, from alcohol-related dementia in 2017, whilst others commented on either the current state of the world or the duo’s annoyance at their former management.

Opening track ‘No Small thing’ sets the

scene for ‘The Tipping Point’ perfectly, starting with Orzabal and Smith gently strumming their guitars, offering an insight into the rebuilding of their relationship and the return to songwriting in its most organic form. There is something of an Americana influence to the first movement of the song before it builds and builds towards a grandiose Beatles-esque orchestral, Psychedelic middle section and coda and eventually sucks itself inside out under the sheer weight of its own emotional gravitas. This leads us neatly into the album’s title track and lead single, which amidst a shuffling drum groove harking back to that of ‘Everybody Wants to the Rule the World’ provides ‘The Tipping Point’s most harrowing account of the final days of Orzabal’s wife, replete with ghostly backing vocals from Smith.

As we move further into the album, it would seem that those sessions with modern day producers were not a complete waste of time, as evidenced by the blips and beats that pervade ‘Long, Long, Long Time’, an otherwise sumptuous and sweetly-sung piano ballad which discusses ageing and the passage of time, but most importantly in the context of this album, how to deal with loss. Meanwhile, most recent single ‘Break the Man’ successfully manages to marry further contemporary influences with a strong sense of classic Tears for Fears, not least with the chiming chord reminiscent of ‘Advice for the Young at Heart’ (‘The Seeds of Love’) which ushers in an exquisitely harmonious dual vocal performance and the theme of the strength of a woman in a man’s world which perhaps renders it the sequel to ‘Woman in Chains’ from the same album.

‘My Demons’ is the most upbeat and modern sounding track on ‘The Tipping Point’ with its throbbing rhythm similar to Muse’s ‘Uprising’ (‘The Resistance’, 2009) and one that deals with a very modern issue, that of surveillance. ‘Rivers of Mercy’, meanwhile, takes the pace of the album down for a floaty and almost a little too serene piece of romanticism which passes comment on the pandemic, whilst ‘Please Be Happy’ is a lushly orchestrated and endlessly lovely rumination on the depression which fuelled the addiction that led to Orzabal’s wife’s untimely end.

Big, bold and euphoric ballad ‘Master Plan’ takes a sly dig at the duo’s former management and their view of them as commodities rather than artistes, before ‘End of Night’ provides a piece of late in the day Pop escapism which almost ventures into Pet Shop Boys territory. It is then left to the beautifully-sung ‘Stay’, previously recorded for 2017’s ‘Rule the World: The Greatest Hits’ but now brought back with a much more lavish synth-led arrangement, to supply a fittingly emotional and heartfelt epilogue to an album which has seen Orzabal and Smith overcome so much to produce a piece of work as timeless as any other in their back catalogue.