Damn the Clichés, Full Speed Ahead
by: matt cibula

Call it a comeback, because Tears for Fears was dead. Well, at least the "classic" version, with both (band mastermind) Roland Orzabal and (what-exactly-does-he-do-again) Curt Smith. They owned, for about three albums in the mid- to late-1980s, the wistful Beatles-loving new wave pop market. They learned all this from their hometown mentors-and the only other important band ever to come from Swindon, England-XTC.

And the first song here, the title track, sounds exactly like it could have been from XTC's album The Big Express. Everything rings with charm, there are sudden twists and turns in the song's structure, and there's lots of talk about love and butterflies and day-to-day living. Oh, and "the grass is always greener on the other side / so stay and breathe new life". The main difference is that instead of XTC's artsy clever wordplay, TFF is more about the rampant clichés. The grass is always greener, one is "in the pink," which rhymes with "missing link," which actually-and I really am not making this up-rhymes with "kitchen sink." So yeah. But if you can get beyond that, it's home free.

That's what you have to do with Tears for Fears. You're going to get some corniness, some ripped-off melodies, some horrid lyrics…and you're also going to get a lot of beauty and stuff you just didn't see coming. We never thought they'd last long enough to come up with a song like "Call Me Mellow," wherein Roland bemoans the fact that the little bedraggled hippie girl at his door is too young for him, but it works despite its horrible title. "The Devil" is a masterfully slow blues waltz, with a raggedy-sounding vocal, strange creaky horror-movie effects, and those excellent harmonies they've always had.

Some of these songs are almost too pretty to function. "Killing With Kindness" has some Fleetwood Mac touches to it; Smith busts out with a plaintive falsetto vocal on his song "Who You Are"; "Last Days on Earth" is some smooth jazz/r&b for sure. Psychedelic monster "Who Killed Tangerine?" has been getting a lot of press, but I favor the next one, "Quiet Days," which kind of has a Cure vibe to go with its Prince-quoting lyrics and Roland's Bono vocal impression.

See, I'm a fan, so maybe you should discount some of this. But I don't think so. I think you should dive right in. They're too young to be real hippies and they're too old to be emo, but they're still around and still contain the best of both worlds. I forgive them their unoriginality, their fuzzy lyrics, everything. And that's not "critical" thinking. But I think, objectively, that 3.5 out of 5 people will like it, even if they're not huge fans from way back.
02-Nov-2004 8:00 PM