Tears for Fears – Songs for a Nervous Planet

Let’s be honest: some bands bring out the best in themselves in a studio, while others are best experienced live. The chance that someone would name Tears for Fears as an example of the latter category is about as likely as the Gallagher brothers surviving an Oasis reunion without fighting.

Speaking of reunions: who would have thought a few years ago that Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith would ever share the stage as a duo again? But after “The Tipping Point” was released in 2022, the duo and a five-piece band of session musicians went on tour once again. The result is “Songs for a Nervous Planet”, a genuine live album.

A first hint that Tears for Fears could also be a great live band came with “Songs from the Big Chair”, the album that marked their breakthrough. On that album, “Head over Heels” transitions into a live recording of “Broken”, complete with a loud closing applause. However, fans have had to wait forty years for a full-fledged live album, Orzabal admits in the liner notes of this new record. It had to be worth it.

This reflects the working style of Tears for Fears. On every album, you can hear the perfectionism: in the songwriting, the arrangements, and the production itself. You can tell that nothing is left to chance, and with that observation, we come directly to the eternal point of criticism: it’s all very polished. Even live. It’s like a freshly plastered wall with paintings hung precisely in line and at the exact distance from each other, using a spirit level.

You hear this also in the four fresh studio tracks added to this album. There’s always hope that new work will reach the level of the masterful “Sowing the Seeds of Love”, but the latest tracks come nowhere close. The duo falls back on tried and true formulas, like with “Emily Said”, which—like “Sowing the Seeds of Love”—seems to be inspired primarily by the later works of the Beatles, complete with an odd stylistic break at the end. That inspiration is missing from the other tracks. In particular, “Say Goodbye to Mum and Dad” is a throwaway that this album could have done just fine without.

And live? Don’t expect any wild surprises. The songs, including all the major hits, are performed solidly, mostly as they were originally laid down in the studio. It must be said that vocalist Carina Round does an excellent ‘Oleta Adams’ in “Woman in Chains”, immediately followed by the only true standout: “Bad Man’s Song”, where there is room for the kind of spontaneity that makes live performances truly interesting. Here you can hear that Tears for Fears as a live band stands strong—like a house with freshly plastered walls. Nothing wrong with that.

Although, when it comes to those paintings, a little more playfulness here and there wouldn’t hurt. (7/10) (Concord)