The thing about most hipsters, particularly the London schmedia variety, is that they are just so utterly, tragically unhip. How could anyone envy people who have so little individuality or conviction that it takes compilations like last year's fashionable “Guilty Pleasures” to allow them to confess which songs they like? A herd who can only enjoy ELO or 10CC when they’re safely wrapped up in sticky, self-satisfied irony?
Of course, Tears For Fears are so heroically unfashionable that even “Guilty Pleasures” would cross the road to avoid them. Perhaps if they had stuck to doomy electronica, TFF might have found a place in the current retro cool parade, but by abandoning that for the widescreen rock-pop that made them massive they abandoned all claims to chic. Not to mention Roland Orzabal, a man who seems to have weighed-up Bono and Sting and decided that their big problem is they just aren’t pompous enough.
So, if you are worried what your friends think of your record collection, you should definitely give this a miss. You may not hear a few of the most interesting, oddball songs of the eighties, but at least you’ll have Lemon Jelly and Zero 7 to comfort you in your dreariest, emptiest moments.
For the rest of us, it’s the melody. There’s the near-autistic, stunned slice of alienation that was “Mad World” (an exceptional song long before it was drearily covered for “Donnie Darko”). There’s “Shout”, a song so rhythmically clattering, so droning, so peculiar, that even its monster chorus doesn’t explain how it could possibly have been a global number one. There’s “Sowing The Seeds Of Love”, as inventive, loveable and addictive as it is overblown.
And then there’s “Head Over Heels”, which has nothing sonically brave or intriguing about it, but which is so sumptuous, with its deep, loving hug of a chorus, that it could bruise even the toughest of hearts. Few songs have captured so perfectly the narcotic rush of new love.
When Tears For Fears fell on their faces, they did so spectacularly, as can be heard here in the gruesome pomp and no-circumstance of “I Believe” or the bland nonsense of “Advice For The Young At Heart”. But listening to this album raises a question: in the last seconds before you die, do you want to remember the songs that made you feel briefly fashionable or the songs that, despite everything, made you feel thrilled and excited and alive?
If you hesitated, don’t buy this.
