When Tears For Fears returned after a long absence with 2022’s The Tipping Point, they reiterated their ability to go big without going over the top. The album revelled in massive production, epic songs and copious emoting, yet pulled off the duo’s time-honoured trick of making music with colossal ambition easily digestible. Pop music, but in its highest form.
Now re-energised – despite an increase in grey hair – Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith have released a live album with four brand-new tracks. Such mix-and-match projects can feel a bit ungainly, as if the new songs are bolted on just to tempt hesitant voters. Such is the sumptuousness, however, of these four fillips that everything gels gracefully.
The concert recordings (from Franklin, Tennessee) themselves blend cross-career classics and newer favourites with an awareness of pacing and momentum. And excitement: the thing with Tears For Fears is that, while correctly praised for their studio slickness, when treading the boards they know how to let rip.
All that poise and balance they exude in the studio flies out the window, in a good way, once they get their dander up. They don’t launch into Shout without letting it all out, and when they’re sowing the seeds of love, they lean into every cheap thrill that number possesses – and it possesses more than most band’s entire albums.
The harmonies get worryingly Take That-ish, but there’s a prog-friendly surprise at each transition
They’re so dynamic live that when the big gear-shift power chord on Woman In Chains arrives here, it’s a surprise that they undersell it, relatively. At one point, Orzabal gets so animated he detours into a chorus of Wings’ Let ’Em In. Bells ring. Marrying evergreens like Pale Shelter and younger songs like My Demons, this live set is a treat.
Say Goodbye To Mum And Dad opens the unveiling of the new numbers. After a whistling refrain which evokes MGMT, it settles into a recognisable TFF tempo, Orzabal suggesting ‘society’s gone mad,’ thus reassuring us that his recurring lyrical themes remain on point. It aches for the past while embracing sounds of the present.
The Girl That I Call Home wears synth and drum moves which wouldn’t have been incongruous on The Hurting, then glides into a smooth, sophisticated love paean. The harmonies get worryingly Take That-ish, but there’s a prog-friendly – and even dubby – surprise at each transition.
Emily Said switches on this band’s Beatles-produced-by-Brian-Wilson tap (never a bad thing) while the beautiful Astronaut is an instant stand-out, loaded with yearning while daringly rhyming ‘astronaut’ with ‘a missile Castro bought.’ Tears For Fears rule the world.
• Songs For A Nervous Planet is on sale now via Concord.
