Tears For Fears –
Chronicles (3 CD set)
Sound: B Music:
A-
One of the great duos in all of music history, Tears For
Fears came in as the very different but successful Daryl Hall & John Oates
were peaking with their H20 album in 1982, which ran through 1983. It was the end of a run of three great
albums, something duos seem to rack up when they get on a roll. 1983 was also the year of The Hurting,
a stunning debut album that was more New Wave, experimental and fresh than
almost anything radio was playing at the time.
So much so in fact that the album did not become a huge hit and yielded
no big hit singles. It is the first of
the three great albums Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal made under the act’s name
(before Smith left for a while in 1992) collected in the new Chronicles
long box CD set.
All are remastered, which really helps The Hurting,
with a previous CD edition that was sonically unacceptable. In 2001, that album gained a new generation
of interest when a remake of the remarkable Mad World surfaced in the
now-classic Richard Kelly film Donnie Darko (reviewed in three versions
elsewhere on this site). However, The
Hurting is a masterwork of composition, lyrics, resonance, deep thought,
deep emotions, musicianship and empathetic singing. The tracks here include:
1) The
Hurting
2) Mad
World
3) Pale
Shelter
4) Ideas As
Opiates
5) Memories
Fade
6) Suffer
The Children
7) Watch Me
Bleed
8) Change
9) The
Prisoner
10) Start Of The Breakdown
11) Pale Shelter (long version)
12) The Way You Are (extended)
13) Mad World (world mix)
14) Change (extended version)
Right away, the vocals are on target, with range and depth
that are not held back by the electronic side of the song. The faster pace of the performance does not
negate any of the emotion or meaning of the song or any other track here,
something new Wave music has been accused of.
The Mad World remake is slower-paced, but the idea was that the
singers in the genre were so emotionally advanced against the technology
(Depeche Mode singing Enjoy The Silence for instance) that the music was
about moving ahead and fans got that, even subconsciously. Like Elton John without his wild costumes,
the music has more than endured decades later and will continue to gain it
proper reputation and place as some of the most important music of its time.
That is minimalism for a different effect as the
truer-than-ever Ideas As Opiates demonstrates. They were working on a higher level than most writers of their
time and people are still catching up to their work. Pale Shelter is a great example of their remarkable
lyrics, their ability to communicate with lyrical economy, yet has an amazing
impact. The music creates different
sonic landscapes without fancy, show-off surrounds that mean something. Memories Fade is an exceptionally
mature work, while Watch Me Bleed is about The Reality Principle killing
the soul. Change deals with
someone closing themselves off to another, while The Prisoner is spare
and imaginative. The remixes are a
plus, especially since the CD has the room to include them.
To day the duo broke the sophomore curse with Songs
From The Big Chair in 1985 is a huge understatement. Instead, the album was a tremendous hit and
yielded several all-time pop classics.
Yes, it was more accessible than its predecessor, but it was no less a
great album. The tracks include:
1) Shout
2) The
Working Hour
3) Everybody
Wants To Rule The World
4) Mothers
Talk
5) I
Believe
6) Broken
7) Head
Over Heals/Broken
8) Listen
9) The Big
Chair
10) Empire Building
11) The Marauders
12) Broken Revisited
13) The Conflict
14) Mother’s Talk (U.S. remix)
15)
Shout (U.S.
remix, issued previously on a foreign CD-V)
Besides extremely popular Music Videos by Nigel Dick that
further pushed Shout, Everybody Wants To Rule The World and the
exemplary clip for Head Over Heals onto the charts, Everybody Wants
To Rule The World was used as the end credit music for Martha Coolidge’s Real
Genius in the Summer of ’85. A
spoof of Shout with its lyrics altered for the laundry detergent it
shares the same name with surfaced as well.
Most important, though, the album sold like crazy and put their talents
on the map for good. Everybody Wants
To Rule The World and Shout were chart toppers worldwide.
Of the other songs, Broken is a companion to Head
Over Heals, so it could almost be thought as a sort of flipside, while Listen
was often played as an extension of the hit.
The underrated Mothers Talk was the 4th U.S. single
and should have been bigger than Top 30, but is no less a great record about
finding one’s way. I Believe is
also a strong song, reflecting on coming to terms with possibly being a lost
soul. Some great instrumentals and
remixes are also on this remaster. Songs
From The Big Chair not only proved Tears For Fears could have hits, but
that they were not a one-trick pony, but one of the most formidable music acts
in the business.
After a four-year break, the duo released The Seeds Of
Love in 1989. It’s title song and
Music Video that accompanied it suggested a very Sgt. Pepper’s
psychedelia, though the album is not as challenging, but was a Top Ten
million-seller. The tracks include:
1) Woman In
Chains
2) Badman’s
Song
3) Sowing
The Seeds Of Love
4) Advice
For The Young At Heart
5) Standing
On The Corner Of The Third World
6) Swords
& Knives
7) Year Of
The Knife
8) Famous
Last Words
9) Tears
Roll Down
10) Always In The Past
11) Music For Tables
12) Johnny Panic & The Bible Of Dreams
The title song was a bigger hit than many may remember,
while Woman In Chains was actually a duet with Oleta Adams that featured
the monotonous drumming of Phil Collins and barely made the top 40. This was not a great record and set the
album and group back in profound ways.
That was the end of the hit singles, while the music was even more
standardized than the difference between their first two albums. The idea of the R&B emphasis was a
strange turn and Adams joins the band again on Badman’s Song, which is a
risk to take, but one that puts the band out of its element. Sowing The Seeds Of Love is so
Beatlesque that it is too bad they were not bold enough to go full force into
that direction, because this track works and is more of what fans would have
expected.
In addition, the likes of Advice For The Young At Heart
sounds like a Jimmy Webb song with its pop whimsy, and is not bad. Swing Out Sister tried the same thing around
the same time, so both acts may have felt New Wave was fading. Year Of The Knife is a live track,
while the rest of the music is about layered sound and the most accessible of
the three albums. At this point, one
can see why Smith moved on.
Fortunately, he returned and Orzabal kept the name alive in the 1990s.
The PCM 2.0 16Bit/44.1kHz sound is not bad from being
remastered, even with the usual resolution limits of the format. We were hoping for SACDs or DVD-Audios of
these albums, but they have not surfaced to date, nor have any DualDiscs. Besides several DVD-Videos with the band,
the original Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs did issue a 24-karat Gold CD of Songs
From The Big Chair in the early 1990s and it makes for an interesting
comparison to this new aluminum remaster.
The MoFi version is more refined and the gold holds the sound better to
some extent, but the remaster has some more depth, space and sounds like it was
transferred at a higher volume. That
does not make it a replacement for the MoFi version, but both have their ups
and downs, with the MoFi version sounding a bit more compressed than expected.
There are no extras in this long box, but there is a
section for the text booklets that would normally come with the CD cases. Otherwise, you get three of the best, most
ambitious and most interesting albums from the 1980s and from one of its most
underrated acts. Orzabal continued the
band on his own with the 1992 release Elemental, followed by Raoul
& The Kings Of Spain in 1995 which marks the only time the band did not
record with a Universal Music label. By
2004, Smith returned for Everybody Loves A Happy Ending, the first album
the original duo had cut in 15 years.
Be sure to look for those titles and much more on the band elsewhere on
this site, now and to come.
- Nicholas Sheffo
