Tears for Fears

Everybody Loves a Happy Ending

By:  Jonathan Martinez

It was against all odds, but it happened nonetheless.  Tears for Fears have reunited.

After a bitter split upon completing what many view as their masterpiece, Sowing the Seeds of Love, the duo, composed of Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith, have mended fences and in September released their first album together in 15 years.  It is titled, appropriately, Everybody Loves a Happy Ending.

And the result?  Orzabal and Smith have created a joyous album that varies between the simple and the complex, sometimes within a song.  They have managed to combine XTC with Paul McCartney, while still sounding distinctly Tears for Fears.  Scattered throughout are catchy pop hooks mixed in with backwards guitars and orchestrations that would make Sir Paul proud.  Tears for Fears have picked up right where they left off.

"When we did 'Sowing the Seeds of Love' we were doing Lennon," says Orzabal.  "And I would say the main influence for this album was McCartney, because I think McCartney is the new Lennon."

So that is where they are.  But where have they been?

The members of Tears for Fears have been through peaks and valleys, friendship and hostility, monumental successes and massive struggles.  The band got its start in the late 70's when childhood friends Orzabal and Smith formed a ska band by the name of Graduate.  After releasing a few unsuccessful singles, they put Graduate and ska behind them and formed Tears for Fears, taking on a new, very contemporary synth pop sound.  In 1983 they released their debut album, The Hurting.  The album featured "Mad World," "Pale Shelter," and "Change," all of which were top 10 hits in the band's native Britain.  A solid start, no doubt; but bigger success was still ahead of them.

Two years later the band would release their sophomore effort, Songs from the Big Chair, which featured two smash-hit singles, "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" and "Shout," both of which went to No. 1.  A third single, "Head Over Heals," also shot up the charts, peaking at No. 3.  Their pop genius, however, was yet to be fully realized.

Orzabal and Smith labored long and hard over their next release.  Sowing the Seeds of Love was released late in 1989, a full four years after Songs from the Big Chair was released.  The most amazing thing about Sowing the Seeds of Love may have been its very overt Beatles influence.  Tape-reversed instruments abounded, intermingled with some of the catchiest pop hooks the band ever concocted.  The title track went to No. 2 on the charts, but overall the album did not experience nearly as much commercial success as its predecessor.  This was more than made up for by the critical acclaim it received.

It has been said that familiarity breeds contempt, and Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith proved to be no exception.  Amidst working on the follow up to Sowing the Seeds of Love they began to have their differences, causing Smith to leave the band in 1990.  Elemental, the next Tears for Fears album, was released in 1993 with Orzabal alone at the helm.  The years that followed saw Orzabal face one question repeatedly.

"Every time I walked into a record company with any music, they were going, 'Oh, this is great! Can you get back together with Curt?'"  Roland says on tearsforfears.net, the band's official website.

After years of facing that question, the improbable happened when the duo announced that they were working together again and had a new album in the works.  They've since completed a lengthy tour and are rumored to be headlining at Coachella 2005. 

Tears for Fears are back on top of their game.  Like they said nearly twenty years ago, "Everybody Wants to Rule the World."  Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith have ruled the pop world, and they may do so again in the near future.

My rating: ****

Potential singles: "Closest Thing to Heaven."   "Call Me Mellow."

My picks:  "Everybody Loves a Happy Ending." "Call Me Mellow."  "Last Days on Earth."

Ratings scale:

*****   An instant classic.

****     Excellent. The best of its kind.

***       Good, but nothing spectacular.

**         Average.

Brian Wilson

Smile

By:  Jonathan Martinez

Brian Wilson has had to fight his inner demons over the years, but he has never had a victory over them quite like this.  He has completed the most legendary unfinished album in history, Smile.

So what happened in Brian Wilson's head that made him finally want to revisit this music that took him from being a vibrant, creative genius in late 1966 to being an emotionally sensitive recluse by early 1967?  The need to give Beach Boys fans what they wanted.

Wilson embarked on the massively successful Pet Sounds tour in 2002, which, in retrospect, was most likely the catalyst for his latest project.  There remained only one way to follow up (and possibly, if not likely, top) the Pet Sounds tour: a tour featuring a newly completed rendition of Smile.

Wilson began Smile in 1966 as a follow-up to Pet Sounds, the Beach Boys' masterpiece according to both fans and critics.  It was to be by far his most ambitious work to date, and was getting very near completion when it was shelved for reasons only known to its author.  He recently announced that he had finished Smile and subsequently entered the studio to record it.  Smile, an album nearly 38 years in the making, was released this past September to eager fans everywhere.

"To all the fans who have waited all these years for me to finish Smile.  I dedicate this to you," Wilson writes in the liner notes of the album.

What is it that Brian Wilson has had to endure that has made him the way he is, an eccentric, nervous, and very noticeably uncomfortable human being?  It started at home from an early age.  It has been well documented that Murry Wilson ruled his household with an iron fist, often making his three sons, Brian and his two younger brothers Dennis and Carl, stand around the family's piano for hours singing harmonies, preparing them for the success in the music industry that had, for the most part, eluded him.  Murry had lost one of his eyes in an industrial accident, and in order to "toughen up" his sons, he would make them stand directly across from him, face-to-face, staring into that empty eye socket.  If any of his sons so much as flinched at the sight, Murry would knock him into a wall at the opposite end of the room.  At the sight of a tear Murry would proceed to give out a fierce beating, telling his son to "quit being such a baby."  One of these beatings was so severe that it left young Brian deaf in his right ear.  It's a condition that he still has.  He has always left his engineers to mix his albums in stereo.

It was Brian's abusive early home life that left him a wreck later on.  He has had a lifelong struggle with depression and various other mental ailments, some of which have left him consuming industrial quantities of drugs, alcohol and junk food.  At these times he was often a bed-ridden, depressed emotional mess.  Some of these episodes were so severe that Brian had at times weighed upwards of 300 pounds.  Years of questionable pharmaceutical and psychological treatments have left him in what seems to be a strange state of mind.  Those that interview him all come back with the same story: Brian sits in front of them looking very nervous, taps out a rhythm on the arm of the chair with his hand, and after about half an hour of answering the interviewer's questions, he stands up, says thank you, and hastily leaves the room.  He also says that he experiences intense stage fright before every show.  Some shows are worse than others, but typically he can talk himself through it and still manage to put on a great show.

Despite all of this, however, Brian Wilson has triumphed.  He is widely considered to be a master of the studio environment, an environment in which he claims, despite his expertise, to be very uncomfortable.  Time has done almost nothing to diminish his abilities.  With this new version of Smile, he proves that he is still capable of working in the studio just as he did back in the mid-1960's. 

Brian Wilson Presents Smile

My rating: *****

Singles: "Heroes and Villains" (1967).  "Good Vibrations" (1967).

  "Wonderful" (2004)

My picks:  "Surf's Up."  "Heroes and Villains."  "Our Prayer."

Ratings scale:

*****   An instant classic.

****     Excellent. The best of its kind.

***       Good, but not particularly special.

**         Average.