In 1985, the tube Everybody Wants to Rule the World installed Tears for Fears at the top of the new wave. Alongside Depeche Mode, The Cure, Simple Minds or Eurythmics, the duo from Bath renewed English pop by mixing harmonies inherited from the Beatles with synthesizers and drum machines drawn from Brian Eno or Kraftwerk. Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith, who seemed to have ended the Tears for Fears adventure in 2004 with the albumEverbody Loves a Happy Ending, come back, at 60, with a style that maturity has not changed.
The Tipping Point, their new album, combines the rock rhythms of My Demons to the sensitivity of Please Be Happy. The English banish their spleen with poetry. “When I’m wrinkled and wise/I’ll trade all my freedom/To find that look in your eyes”, do they sing in No Small Things, guitar-voice ballad rising to the top of a silky, inspired pop. From their worked melodies emerges an emotional force culminating in the title The Tipping Point“tipping point” between sadness and hope.
Almost biblical accents
Anger in the face of oppression, in Break the Man Where Masterplanthreats once morest democracy… Tears for Fears takes an empathic and committed look at the world. Rivers of Mercy opens with police sirens and an urban rumor, that of the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
“Lay me down in the rivers of mercy/Dare I imagine faith and understanding?/Bring the dead back tonight and bathe them in holy light/To wash away the sorrow/And save me from the shadows”, asks this title with almost biblical accents. With the elegiac End Of Night, he reminds us that pop, at its best, can express an ardent spiritual longing.
