The Tipping Point - Tears For Fears: Review

Tears For Fears

are a legendary British pop rock band who crafted numerous hits across a 3 album run in the 1980's, many of which have become enduring favorites and classics from the era. After an era of inconsistent line-ups in the 90's the band returned their core duo Roland Orsabel and Curt Smith for a 6th album in 2004. The Tipping Point is their first new studio album since then, an 18 year gap.

Review By Lav:

I adore so many Tears For Fears classics. Everybody Wants To Rule The World, Woman In Chains, Mad World, Shout, Sowing The Seeds Of Love, Head Over Heels. They have a trio of records in the 1980's that hold up to almost anyone else from their era and the pinnacle, 1985's Songs From The Big Chair, is one of my favorite pop albums of all time. With all that being said I'm must less fond of the next 3 records in their career than I am of the first 3. I think I give the band more credit than a lot of critics for what they managed to achieve in that era but there's also no denying it's not really considered their classic era. Given that it's been a long time since their heyday I wasn't really anticipating this record to be revolutionary or anything because albums this far into an artists career rarely are. I was pleasantly surprised with The Tipping Point though, even with some duds mixed into the tracklist the band manages to keep many of their trademark sonic elements in tact. 

This record had 3 singles and I quite enjoyed the first two, which also happen to be the first two songs on the record. The Tipping Point came first and I find myself immediately wrapped up in the Postal Service style intro and how it works perfectly into the anthemic drums. Then when the synths climb back into the mix on the hook it's a wonderful moment. I also think the thematic element of "the tipping point" between life and death is a pretty compelling note that contrasts well with the brightness of the song. No Small Thing also worked for me opening up as a kind of rootsy acoustic but but in typical fashion is rises to incorporate more and more instrumentation. The sounds do sort of clash when you pair these building synth lines that crash into these stop clap refrains but ultimately the hook mostly saves everything. 

I was surprised by how quickly I fell for some songs here like Long, Long, Long Time and My Demons. The first of which has a dreamy hook with a great female vocalist that combines with these splashes of cymbals and blocky drums to form a swaying beautiful chorus. Demons on the other hand is a much kookier song with these funny little intertwined vocal refrains and a hook that goes surprisingly hard. Even if the bridge is a bit of a drag I still enjoy how unpredictable the song is. 

Break The Man was the third single and it paints a better picture of the second half of the record. It's the first real back to basics pop song on the record and even though it's still pretty elaborately orchestrated I find the hook a bit taxing. Most of the songs fun comes in the instrumental transitions between passages but overall I'm not necessarily a fan. I feel similarly, maybe slight better about Please Be Happy and Master plan which come back to back. Happy starts as a piano ballad and slowly turns more anthemic but I actually like the way it develops quite a bit. The refrains and complimentary instrumentation are certainly familiar even a bit predictable but they still sound good. Master Plan also isn't a bad song by any means and actually takes a similar swing at things but it doesn't have quite the same level of payoff I was hoping for. 

The record ends on kind of a flat note starting with End Of Night which certainly gets your attention right away with these thick and wiry synths that are as loud as anything else on the entire album. The song itself is actually pretty good and has some really catchy moments but that instrumental prescence definitely starts to wear me down, even to the point of being actively annoying by the end of the song. Closing track Stay is a pretty meek way to end things off. It has an airy and mostly self-defeating hook that I'm not crazy about and while there are some cool synth lines blaring out into the background nothing on the track is really THAT sonically interesting. 

Rivers Of Mercy is the kind of song that I was hoping the band wouldn't try to do, but thankfully they didn't really go through with it. When it starts off with samples of some kind of riots or civil unrest which leads into the almost cartoonishly out of touch glittery piano ballad with lyrics about the state of the world, I was bracing for the worst. Thankfully the song is mostly built around general metaphors with only a slightly pessimistic edge to their projections. The track itself is okay and honestly I'm just thankfully they didn't go full tasteless social commentary with the song. 

So that's The Tipping Point, not necessarily a new classic record for the band but also a record quite better than what a lot of groups are capable of at this stage in their career. Moments here see the band actually managing to surprise me and deploy their old formulas with the same effective ambition and sonic scope as ever. If their occasionally theatrical brand of larger than life pop rock is your kind of thing there are certainly tracks here worth exploring. 6/10

Album Cover Review by Tyler Judson:

This cover is really cool. It has no super bright colors and uses the composition to draw the eye to the center. I love the motion that it has and seems to be rotating around the center. You can get a little lost in the lines of the chairs but other than that I think it's dynamic and plays with asymmetry in a nice way. I also like the addition of text to tie everything together. 7.5/10

For more pop rock check out my review of The Wombats' Fix Yourself, Not The World here