The years have each scarred and enlivened Tears for Fears. Their 2022 comeback album The Tipping Point was sparked by a reunion, for the primary time since 2004, between Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith after Orzabal’s spouse died in 2017. The album was knowledgeable by her dying, in addition to the newly cast bond between the longtime collaborators, who went Top 10 throughout the globe for the primary time since 1989’s The Seeds of Love. (Smith was not on Tear for Fears’ 1993 album Elemental.)

The ensuing tour, accomplished in two levels after Smith broke 4 ribs in an accident that pulled them off the highway for a yr, was as celebratory because it was a validation. During the interim, their 1985 hit “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” reentered the charts, marking Tears for Fears’ comeback full.

A victory lap is taken on Songs for a Nervous Planet, the group’s first official dwell album culled from a July 2023 present in Franklin, Tennessee, that features fan favorites, songs from The Tipping Point and 4 new studio tracks. (A companion theatrical movie can be being launched concurrently.) It’s the historical past of Tears for Fears, so far, in 22 songs.

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The live performance tracks, expectedly, embrace their greatest cuts: “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” “Sowing the Seeds of Love,” “Mad World,” “Head Over Heels” and “Shout” are all right here, glimmering of their new settings whereas retaining the classic new wave sparkle that made them hits 4 many years in the past. It’s a little bit nostalgic however greater than that it is affirmation that Tears for Fears’ art-minded synth-pop hasn’t aged a lot in that point. These are nice songs performed by guys relishing their newest chapter.

Songs for a Nervous Planet‘s 4 new songs proceed the trail they trailed on The Tipping Point. There’s purification and spectacle on show as Orzabal and Smith proceed their therapeutic course of. From the deceivingly joyous “Say Goodbye to Mum and Dad” (“Go tell all your friends society’s gone mad“) to the sweetly melancholic “The Girl That I Call Home” to “Astronaut,” about discovering peace in being alone, that is assured art-pop for trendy instances that by no means neglects the duo’s previous.