Tears for Fears
The Tipping Point

It seems incredible, but they did it! Tears For Fears are releasing their seventh album a whopping 18 years after the previous one! Back then, 9 years had passed since the album before that, who would have expected in 2004 that the wait for the next album would be double...?! We're talking about a band that's not very prolific, 7 albums in 40 years of career is quite few.

The duo certainly needs no introduction, they were an important name in the '80s pop scene, but not the sweet and frivolous kind, rather the more refined and sophisticated one, the kind that appears on the charts but maintains a certain decorum and musical depth; because let's be honest, being an unpretentious group is often used as an excuse to justify sparse and flat arrangements if not true monstrosities, when even the lightest music should be made with skill and care. To me, Tears For Fears might be the best pop group ever, because they've managed to be very catchy while meticulously curating and studying their arrangements, their music is light but not too much so, in any case, it always remains "music"; it's no coincidence that they more or less unite all true music lovers and are often even lumped (quite forcibly) into the progressive category, a genre they have little to do with (perhaps the third album comes close without quite getting there).

The last work dated 2004, however, didn't have brilliant ideas, it lingered in its almost brit-pop limbo and didn't go beyond it, lacking variety, it was very by-the-book, good but decidedly below the band's standard, so there might have been some doubts about the success of this new work.

Dismissed. "The Tipping Point" presents Tears For Fears at the level of inspiration we would expect. A varied album filled with dazzling melodies, and why not, also blatantly out of fashion. Really, it doesn't sound like a 2022 album, if you let someone listen to it and don't tell them it's a release from this year they probably won't place it in 2022. The duo doesn't want to bow to modernity, they reject it, accepting it would be an unworthy and inconsistent choice, because a name like Tears For Fears that has made elegance its trademark cannot bow to the laws of the market and the monotony of the top charts; the duo plays in their own way, with the refinement that has always distinguished them, and even chooses to remain vintage without sounding too dated, we could roughly talk about "renovated '80s." When you listen to tracks like "Break the Man," "Rivers of Mercy," the orchestral and jazzy "Please Be Happy," and "Stay," you really feel like you're at the end of the '80s, they managed to recreate those particular atmospheres almost faithfully, they almost seem to come out of "The Seeds of Love," the sounds are there! However, there's also something that sounds a bit more recent and even more raw and less elegant, and it essentially consists of the two electronic incursions as God commands, "My Demons" and "End of Night," which echo the contemporary Depeche Mode but the more alternative and edgy ones of the 2000s. The opener "No Small Thing" is also striking, diving headlong into an unusual overseas country, with a warm sound that would have fit well in "Raoul and the Kings of Spain."

18 years of waiting well rewarded. Where to place this work in the group's discography? Well, the comparison with the historic '80s albums is lost but not by a large margin, it is instead an open match with the albums of the '90s, while it wins quite widely against the 2004 work. You took all the time and in the end, you were right... but please, don't make us wait centuries for the next release!