Songs From The Big Chair

About

When Tears for Fears convened to make their second album in 1984, they were young, ambitiou, and dead set on making sure the world knew they were something more than the Thompson Twins or Duran Duran. Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal’s first album under that name, 1983’s <i>The Hurting</i>, was some of the bleakest music to make a commercial impression since Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy, bridging the introversion of goth with the extroversion of pop. <i>Songs From the Big Chair</i> was more polished and more accessible, too, but still sounded out of sync with the prevailing trends of the time—too big, too complex, too intellectually loaded. Where <i>The Hurting</i> had explored ideas about trauma repression and inner darkne, <i>Chair</i> cast its eyes outward. These aren’t song, they’re billboards: “Shout, shout, let it all out!”; “Everybody wants to rule the world!” The words are clear and the melodies broad, but the treatment is sophisticated enough that the band still scanned as highbrow no matter how many arenas they booked. Smith and Orzabal knew what Depeche Mode and Soft Cell were up to, but remained more interested in stuff like Peter Gabriel, spending 10 hours a day in the studio trimming trees without ever losing sight of the forest. .

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

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