I have to admit. One of my favorite shows of the last year or so has been VH-1’s “Bands Reunited”, in which host Aamer Haleem goes to extraordinary pains in his attempt to reunite bands from the 80s – bands that have not only fallen off our collective pop-cultural radar screen, but also bands with well-documented histories of interpersonal turmoil. He’s not always successful, but when he is able to get people to drop their festering baggage for long enough to do a single live show together (Berlin, Klymaxx, A Flock of Seagulls) – the results can be incredibly moving, and unexpectedly conciliatory.

You never get the idea that any of these bands are seriously going to stay together and create new music. And so in that sense, he live show is always a bit of a lark (though, given the general circumstances, many of the performances – A Flock of Seagulls in particular – are really, gawd-damn tight). And afterwards – it is implied – the members simply go their separate ways, back to their normal lives - sometimes, even, on speaking terms. The necessarily temporary nature of the show is also part of its charm, and indeed, part of the tearjerking poetry of the reunions themselves.

Up until recently, the band Tears for Fears might have been prime candidates for a VH-1 style reunion, the core duo of the band Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith, having split after the release of their third album The Seeds of Love (1989) due to bitter personal differences, many of which were documented in painfully specific vitriol for the fourth Tears for Fears album Elemental (1992) (an Orzabal solo record in all but name). Curt Smith also recorded a couple of solo records (including one under the name Mayfield), but without the name-recognition afforded by the Tears for Fears moniker, they simply sunk away. Meanwhile, even with the benefit of the brand, Orzabal had little success with a final Tears for Fears album Raoul and the Kings of Spain in 1996. And when he finally relented and released his most recent solo album as a solo album (Tomcats Screaming Outside, 2001), it fared even worse.

But commercial oblivion (not to mention a hit re-make of an old classic), especially after having once “ruled the world” can be a powerful salve for old wounds. At some point, it must have crossed both their minds that a little bit of hatchet burial between them might sell some records. And thus, we have Everybody Loves a Happy Ending, the first Tears for Fears album in fifteen years to feature Orzabal and Smith – together.

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But hearing this record makes me wish they’d just gone more the VH-1 live-for-one-night route.

After all, it’s not like they’re going to sell that many copies of the new album, and certainly the back-catalogue (with the three first albums all available in remastered, expanded editions) would have gotten a significant boost once the Bands Reunited episode went into reruns.

You see, Tears for Fears, despite getting lumped in early on with the many British synth-pop acts storming our shores in the early 80s, had, by the end of that decade, proved themselves to be artists of unusual ambition and ability. Yes, Songs from the Big Chair (1985) and The Seeds of Love betrayed some not-always-necessarily-becoming “musicians’ musician” tendencies; but those albums - with their jazzy psychological explorations and powerful pop grandeur - along with the darker, more sparsely electronic debut The Hurting (1983) remain some of the strongest, most enduring records to come from that era.

It’s not the kind of legacy you want to needlessly tinker with.

But with this new record, like any number of obscure little bands currently recording for obscure little labels, the Tears for Fears experience has sadly been reduced to little more than an obscure little game for sneering, socially inept, obscure little record collecting geeks: Pin the Tail on the Allusion. Granted, it’s a much more expensive, much more slickly produced version of the game than that supplied by the likes of the Elephant 6 collective – and the references are far more obvious – but it’s no less annoying, given this much bigger band’s illustrious history.

And like a “Hidden Pictures” page in a Highlights magazine, once you’ve found the nifty little bits of the record, it’s impossible to lose them again and then re-find them, to hear them in new and unexpected ways.

Can you find a verse of Paul McCartney’s “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” woven into the bark of the tree?

How about the near-plagiarism of the La’s “There She Goes” in the oval pattern of the rabbit’s ear?

Can you discern the laborious bass swoon of the Beatles’ “Come Together” hidden among the shingles on the roof of the house?

Or the standard-issue Burt Bacharach trumpet solo stuffed into the puffs of the clouds?

And can you see the echoes of Robert Palmer’s “Every Kinda People” etched into the wing of the little robin?

And did you spot the alarm clock sound effects and plunking piano lines of ELO’s “Mr. Blue Sky” (itself, a blatant ripoff of the Beatles) hidden deftly in the pattern of Suzy’s blouse?

And what about the distinctive backwards-recorded drum opening of Tears for Fears’ own “Sowing the Seeds of Love”? Did you see that one, swirled within the oceanic Gamble & Huff inspired strings and soulful falsetto hooks of “Closest Thing to Heaven”?

Are you sick of this game yet? Yeah. Me too.

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The pleasures of Everybody Loves a Happy Ending are undeniably immediate, and immediately disposable. “Closest Thing to Heaven” really does sound pretty damned close to heavenly the first time you hear it. But once the initial novelty of the sound has faded, the song itself fades even faster. (It doesn’t help much that they drag out the same bag of tricks for the suspiciously similar-sounding “Secret World.”)

And the chipper Abbey-Road-ness of “Who Killed Tangerine” which makes the song an instant stand-out on the CD, is also, ultimately, the song’s greatest liability. Once you’ve been roped in, there’s nothing to hold on to – and thus, nothing to come back for. The hooks which sound so great on first listen, are inexorably stale by the second or third.

And when the songs aren’t blatantly imitative for imitation’s sake, they’re simply boring. They tread water. They fill time. They fill a lot of time. And then they end.

The band enlists producer Charlton Pettus (who collaborated with Smith on his most recent solo release, Aeroplanes, 2000, and gets songwriting credit on about half of this album) in what seems like a self-conscious effort to keep bruised egos in check; but it seems to me that, at least in a musical sense, a good old-fashioned power struggle is often quite beneficial, regardless of the strains it may put on the struggling parties’ sanity.

Am I being selfish? Of course. We music geeks often are. But the last thing I ever wanted from Orzabal and Smith was a happy ending.

Indeed, this is probably the “happiest” sounding record of Tears for Fears’ career. But “happy” was never a forte of the band, and people – like myself – who loved them twenty years ago, never came to them for pretty flowers and rainbows and unicorns. We admired their musicianship, their craft, and the way they challenged themselves; and we swooned to lyrics formed of the fermented detritus of childhood trauma.

The musicianship is still here. So’s the craft. But Everybody Loves a Happy Ending is disappointingly short on trauma.

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BECAUSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:

“Everybody Loves a Happy Ending” by Tears for Fears
New Door / Universal Records
Released 9/14/04

Produced by Charlton Pettus and Tears for Fears
55 min.

SONGS: Everybody Loves a Happy Ending – Closest Thing to Heaven – Call Me Mellow – Size of Sorrow – Who Killed Tangerine? – Quiet Ones – Who You Are – The Devil – Secret World - Killing with Kindness – Ladybird – Last Days on Earth

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BANDS REUNITED:

"Shedding Tears for a Flock of Seagulls"

Mission of Burma - ONoffON (2004)

The Bangles - Doll Revolution (2003)

Soft Cell - Cruelty Without Beauty (2002)




Recommended: No