The last time Tears for Fears released an album, Facebook was still confined to America’s dorm rooms and George W. Bush was less than two weeks removed from being renominated for president. In other words, it’s been a while. But it had been one then, too.
That 2004 disc, the excellent Everybody Loves a Happy Ending, was itself the first in 15 years to feature both of the group’s founders, Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal. Before they split, the band they’d formed as teenagers in Bath, England, in 1981 had been one of the most popular in the world. Turn on the radio in the 1980s and songs including “Change,” “Mad World,” “Shout,” “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” “Head over Heels,” and the Beatles homage/anti-Thatcher anthem “Sowing the Seeds of Love” were nearly inescapable.
Then, as with so many groups before them, enormous success was followed by an acrimonious breakup. Smith stormed out in 1991. Orzabal carried on, releasing what were in effect two solo efforts under the Tears for Fears banner: 1993’s fine Elemental and 1995’s mostly forgettable Raoul and the Kings of Spain.
Finally, in 2000, Smith and Orzabal completed the band life cycle and reconciled after not speaking to each other for nearly a decade. Everybody Loves a Happy Ending arrived four years later. Since then, they’ve toured regularly and issued a few covers. But a follow-up never materialized. After nearly two decades, it seemed one never would. Until out of the blue last fall they announced a new record would arrive in early 2022.
So the long gap was nothing new for the duo. But the world has changed a lot in 17 years — as have Smith and Orzabal. And it is these changes that propel their new album, The Tipping Point, which debuted atop Billboard’s album sales chart. The most dramatic befell Orzabal: the death of his wife in 2017, his own ensuing health problems and stints in rehab, and his subsequent remarriage.
Orzabal’s loss echoes throughout the record. “You know that I can’t love you more,” he declares at the start of “The Tipping Point.” Does he mean he can’t love more because he no longer wants to give his love? That he has no more love to give? Or that he is no longer able to give it as the person it was for can no longer receive it? The answer is all of them, if the beseeching tone in his voice is any guide. On the plaintive “Please Be Happy,” Orzabal’s lyrics reference his wife’s ordeal as she succumbed to depression and alcoholism-induced dementia: “Please be happy / Cos you know that I cannot bear to see you / In this state of melancholy / Curled up in your chair.” But as Smith sings them, it’s hard not to also hear a plea to his musical partner of four decades.
Given the background of its creation, it’s not surprising that The Tipping Point is something of a haunted album. It’s replete with references to shadows and demons. “So who’s that ghost knocking / at my door? … What’s that shape climbing / over my wall?” Orzabal wonders on the title track, to mention just the most prominent example.
Depression and demons are heavy stuff, but they’re the kind of thing this band has long sung about. Psychological trauma has always been its calling card. Its name and the title of their second album, Songs from the Big Chair, are derived from the primal scream therapy of American psychologist Arthur Janov, after all. The first song on their first record, the eponymous “The Hurting,” begins with the words, “Is it an horrific dream / Am I sinking fast?” So Orzabal and Smith venturing into the darker recesses of the psyche is only to be expected.
That debut, 1983’s The Hurting, is the previous record their latest has the most thematic resonance with. The Tipping Point has plenty of lyrics that wouldn’t be out of place on its predecessor. “Life is cruel / Life is tough / Life is crazy then / it all turns to dust,” Orzabal asserts on “The Tipping Point.” Smith returns to that idea on album closer, “Stay,” noting that “Dust to dust / We all fall down.”
Their music has had a moody, brooding quality since the beginning. But 40 years ago it was the sort of moroseness typical of that one kid (or kids) everybody seems to know in high school who bemoans how miserable life is while simultaneously relishing the fact. Nowadays, Orzabal is no longer as enthralled with the “beauty of decay” as he was on 1993’s “Break It Down Again.” Instead, he admits on “End of Night” that he “can’t see the beauty / for all the hurt.” On “Rivers of Mercy” he asks, “Dare I imagine some faith / and understanding?” a question he and Smith wouldn’t have imagined posing 40 years ago.
Death. Loss. Grief. The Tipping Point sounds like a slog to listen to. It’s not. Melancholy and somber though it is on occasion, it’s anything but lugubrious. At times, there’s real joy on it. Orzabal is positively ebullient on “End of Night” as he describes finding new love: “Mistral came along just like / a hurricane / Blew down all the walls / and gave me life again.” Of his new wife, he says on “No Small Thing” simply, “You’re my way out of hell.”
Upbeat melodies paired with vaguely gloomy and sinister lyrics has always been Tears for Fears’s musical trademark. The former is to be heard here no less than the latter. Smith delights in mocking their youthful follies on “Long, Long, Long Time.” The standout track is the pulsating “My Demons,” which is all throbbing synths accompanying Orzabal’s staccato vocals. It’s the hardest Tears for Fears have sounded since “Laid So Low (Tears Roll Down)” and “Lord of Karma” 30 years ago. Close your eyes and you can hear shades of “Shout” at the end, along with a smirk in Orzabal’s voice as he bellows “my demons / don’t get out that much.” Not for the last 17 years, anyway. Their thematic concerns on the album may afford the duo less scope to express them, but when they do, Smith and Orzabal’s pop sensibilities remain strong as ever.
Varad Mehta (@varadmehta) is a writer and historian. He lives in the Philadelphia area.
