Tears For Fears, Raoul and the Kings of Spain

Entertainment Weekly:

Best remembered for their 1985 single ”Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” Tears for Fears return with a ponderous and didactic album of glumly atmospheric Brit-pop that promises to bore listeners to tears. Though slickly assembled, these songs are as off-putting as the chorus to ”God’s Mistake” (”Oh, love is God’s mistake”) would suggest.

Allmusic:

The second Tears for Fears album following Curt Smith’s departure finds Roland Orzabal treading water (and self-consciously deep water at that). Long removed from the simple, melodic melancholy of the band’s early work and abandoning the mid-period Beatles-influenced pop, Raoul and the Kings of Spain often borders on progressive rock. There’s some genuinely pretty, if unexciting, music like the piano-driven ballad “Secrets,” with it’s soaring guitar line, and the gentle “Sketches of Pain.” Unfortunately, everything is undone by Orzabal’s lyrics. There seems to be a lack of ideas that cannot be concealed by the words, which are either inscrutable or embarrassingly silly (“What’s the matter with your life/Did someone come and shoot your wife,” he asks on “Sorry”). Listeners on both sides of the Atlantic couldn’t be bothered, and the act’s commercial fortunes fell even further.

These are both typical critical opinions on late TFF/solo Orzabal; I’m beginning to feel differently about it, though. He’s rather crude at lyrics — rarely do his words seem like much more than an excuse for a melody, and he resorts to cliché idioms with irritating frequency. But he’s a gifted melodist and arranger, to say the least, and the ideas concealed by the weak wordplay are complex, personal and original; I’ll take cliché wordplay over cliché ideas whenever possible. As for “love is God’s mistake,” it deserves some explanation. Orzabal is suggesting that love, in its messiness, appetite and potential for abjection, implies a rather different God than the benevolent prude we keep hearing about.

Okay, so it’s got some awkward lines, but it seems wholly felt. Anyway, what’s so wrong with a little darkness surrounding love? Popism appears to come packaged with a cult of positivity, but is this really necessary? Aren’t we allowed to prize melody and accessibility without also adhering slavishly to a 50’s rubric of purity, lightness and naiveté? Like what you like, by all means, but bear in mind the complexity of the relationship between artistic feeling and more concrete expressions of morality (i.e. judge a tree by its fruit and you might exonerate Phil Spector). True morality isn’t about paying lip service like a bunch of Pharisees, and art shouldn’t be either. We’re allowed to have conflicted feelings, to contain multitudes and to express them all.

There are fair critiques of this record, though “ponderous” seems off-the-mark; it’s quite rhythmic and uptempo for the most part. “Treading water,” also; apart from the trademark super-dense arrangements, Raoul isn’t much like its predecessor. It’s organic where Elemental was mechanical, warm and dark rather glossy and cold, lumbering and gritty rather than light-limbed. “Bland” hits closer, though as these quintessentially 90’s sounds fade from ubiquity, they begin to seem incrementally fresher. “Confused” works too, on multiple levels and none of them good; at points, the hyper-arrangement gets muddy and turgid, plus several of the songs vacillate between patronizing rock bromide (“woman-child”) and inscrutable nothingness (“we could cure this blindness with some human kindness”), and this mealy-mouthed tendency does nothing to flatter Orzabal himself, with his strong, declarative voice and wont to rejoin verse with guitar licks, all of which undeniably suggests pomp and ego.

But even as I criticize that song (“Secrets”), I’m reminded of the memorable, emotive melody, and the snippets of better verse elsewhere (actually, the first verse isn’t too bad). Moreover, on purely formal terms, Raoul is balanced and well-constructed — like a good prog album, it flows expertly from one scene to the next, the rhythms and textures are varied, and there isn’t a snag in the pacing. Thematically, it deals with the power our families have over us, our continuity through others, the continuity of our parents through us, the fact of mortality and how, exactly, one faces it. I’m sure this is all in line with the usual Janov/Jung/mysticism stuff Tears For Fears are obsessed with, but it’s not exactly programmatic (much less didactic); it seems a more ambivalent set of sketches, and that’s a good thing when the concept is so potentially grandiose.

Full disclosure: I grew to love this record when I was too young to know better, so though I’m trying to be objective (in the face of mostly unanimous reviews by maisntream critics), but it’s possible I’m too biased to have an opinion. Just saying.

Future of the Left, Travels With Myself and Another

Better than Mclusky because more serious, if that can be believed. The final Mclusky album saw lyricist Falkous migrate to the political from the personal, albeit in the same stream-of-pique style. On Travels with Myself and Another, he makes the political personal again: distancing himself from GBS (“Arming Eritrea”), dismissing empty gestures (“Throwing Bricks At Trains”), getting creeped out by kids (“Drink Nike”). “The Hope That House Built” begins, “In the end, everybody wins as long as we remember there’s a reason for incredible wealth: incredible luck.”

The music is punk-metal in varying ratios, plus some sly self-parody (“Chin Music”) and a brief art-rock feint (“Lapsed Catholics”), all of which works. But the most satisfying thing about Travels is how it transmutes Falkous’ funny nihilism, retaining the humor but swapping ironic spite for actual steel; this is an admirable maturation, and germane to the present time.

If all skeptics were cynics, political action would be the sole preserve of credulous people; for all kinds of obvious reasons, it can’t be. Mclusky championed cynicism against “collagen rock”; Future of the Left have something bigger on their minds than scathing NME darlings. Travels With Myself and Another is a formal consolidation but more importantly, it shifts emotional agenda and puts this band’s wit where it’s really needed.

Roger Waters

Pink Floyd’s The Wall was an attempted dissection of the incipient fascism of arena-rock, a topic of frequent discussion in the rockcrit of the late 1970’s. If it comes across as an indulgent letter of complaint by lyricist Waters, it’s only because he didn’t spare himself or his own band from critique. That is admirable. Even when The Wall goes too far, is graceless or overwrought, the often discomfitting personalization in the lyrics is a mark of artistic commitment.

Because he’s associated with prog, a peculiarly unreflective “thinking person’s genre,” Roger Waters is often dismissed as an obscurantist. This seems unfair. Waters is an unusually frank and personal lyricist; he reveals uncomfortable feelings other artists might well avoid. His caricature as self-indulgence personified glosses over how rarely he fails to take responsibility for the crimes his lyrics confess.

The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking weathered a shitstorm when it came out, thanks to a cover feminists interpreted as degrading of women. Okay, so it’s a little tasteless, but it’s also an adequate summary of the concept: an examination of the adultery fantasy, its shallowness and its eventual consequences. The protagonist does demean and objectify women, but Waters identifies with this character only provisionally. In the end, his grandiose womanizing stands revealed as immaturity and fear – of loneliness, and mortality, and what happens when you let someone in. His cardinal sin is lack of empathy, a theme that returns again and again in Waters’s art.

Fiction writers often agree provisionally with someone they mean to expose later. Waters personalizes his subjects to understand them, and make us understand them. The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking contains plenty of ugly thoughts, no doubt thoughts he’s had in real life. That the art treats them so darkly should be enough evidence, with or without the come-clean coda at the end, that the aim wasn’t to valorize them.

Now, don’t go taking the above as a full recommendation; I’m defending Waters against the charge of sexism. The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking is still a lousy rock album. It may be worthwhile if you’re in a downer mood and have the patience to lose yourself in a piece of audio theater; otherwise, the most charitable description of most of it is “nonmusical.” When Waters deigns to put song to his verse, it’s all obvious-unto-death. Blues cliché merges with blues cliché, aided by Eric Clapton, for whom cliché is a specialty, and who fails to bring any life to this stagnant opera.

Radio KAOS is the opposite. Songful, even catchy, it reduces the laborious conceptual staging down to its smallest possible footprint: segues, plus a Floyd-like audio collage at the emotional climax. The story is more populist and frankly, much stupider: a poor working stiff taking care of his catatonic son loses it one day, breaks into a hi-fi shop and accidentally kills a guy. The son is sent away with a stolen cordless phone, and uses his radio mind-powers to stage a fake nuclear war, to scare the powers that be and make the people reconsider ruthless capitalism.

The production is baroque 1980’s, complete with drum machines, slap bass, bell piano, saxophone, shakahachi – it’s not far from Dave Gilmour’s own Momentary Lapse of Reason. The key here is the songs, which are direct, emotive and singable, even coverable. I hate to admit it, but as stupid as the plot is, you really start to feel for these characters. That makes Radio KAOS a success in rock opera terms, where the telescoped stories fail without a compensating weight of emotional identification via the music.

Amused to Death is his final, most grandiose, most Floyd-like and in many ways, mushiest and least fulfilling album. Musically, it attempts to marry the chorus-oriented songwriting on Radio KAOS with Hitchhiking’s elaborate prose. Lyrically, it’s a trans-apocalyptic story about television, war and humanity’s demise, though the details are left unclear; Waters speaks in allegory whenever possible, as on the three-part “What God Wants” and “Too Much Rope,” apparently about the experience of being moved to tears by a TV movie. “Watching TV,” a song with Don Henley about a Tiannamen protester’s physical beauty, is too much to stomach.

Amused to Death is nearly saved in its dénouement, where at last the songs begin to connect. “Three Wishes” works a surprisingly touching point about the melancholy beneath material desire; “It’s a Miracle” is the kind of croaking dirge Waters used throughout Hitchhiking, but here, his rebuttal to Reaganomics is more focused and funnier; “Amused to Death” proceeds leisurely from morning TV to the extinction of civilization over a power ballad that works both as satire and song.

Neither these, nor the spottily brilliant “Perfect Sense,” are enough to redeem the album of its worst moments. Neither do they make a convincing case for Waters as more than a noteworthy lyricist. The whole project remains risibly middlebrow. They do, in my opinion, prove Waters as an artist who learned from his errors, enjoyed partial success with unreasonably ambitious goals, and possessed more than a modicum of empathy for his subjects.

Pink Floyd’s The Wall was an attempt to dissect latent fascist impulses in arena-rock, a topic of frequent discussion in the rockcrit of the late 1970’s. If it comes across as an indulgent letter of complaint by lyricist Waters, it’s only because he didn’t spare himself or his own band from critique. That is admirable. Even when The Wall goes too far, is graceless or overwrought, the often discomfitting personalization in the lyrics is a mark of artistic commitment.

Because he’s associated with prog, a peculiarly unreflective “thinking person’s genre,” Roger Waters is often dismissed as an obscurantist. This seems unfair. Waters is an unusually frank and personal lyricist; he reveals uncomfortable feelings other artists might well avoid. His caricature as self-indulgence personified glosses over how rarely he fails to take responsibility for the crimes his lyrics confess.

The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking weathered a shitstorm when it came out, thanks to a cover feminists interpreted as degrading of women. Okay, so it’s a little tasteless, but it’s also an adequate summary of the concept: an examination of the adultery fantasy, its shallowness and its eventual consequences. The protagonist does demean and objectify women, but Waters identifies with this character only provisionally; in the end, his grandiose womanizing is revealed as a banality, as the rationale for immature fears. Like Pink, his cardinal sin is lack of empathy, a theme that returns again and again in Waters’ art.

Fiction writers often agree provisionally with someone they mean to expose later. Waters personalizes his subjects to understand them, and make us understand them. The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking contains plenty of ugly thoughts, no doubt thoughts he’s had in real life. That the art treats them so darkly should be enough evidence, with or without some come-clean coda at the end, that the aim wasn’t to valorize them.

Now, don’t go taking the above as a recommendation; I’m defending Waters against the charge of sexism. The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking is still a lousy album. It may be worthwhile if you’re in a downer mood and have the patience to lose yourself in a piece of audio theater; otherwise, the most charitable description of much of it would be “nonmusical.” When Waters deigns to put song to his verse, it’s all deathly obvious. Blues cliché merges with blues cliché, aided by Eric Clapton, for whom cliché is a specialty, and who fails to bring any life to this stagnant opera.

Radio KAOS is the opposite. Songful, even catchy, it reduces the laborious conceptual staging to its smallest possible size: segues, and a Floyd-like audio collage at the emotional climax. The story is more populist and frankly, much stupider: a poor working stiff taking care of his catatonic son loses it one day, breaks into a hi-fi shop and accidentally kills a guy. The son is sent away with a stolen cordless phone and uses his radio mind-powers to stage a fake nuclear war, to protest the barbarity of ruthless capitalism.

The production is baroque 1980’s, complete with drum machines, slap bass, bell piano, saxophone, shakahachi – it’s not far from Dave Gilmour’s own Momentary Lapse of Reason. The key here is the songs, which are direct, emotive and singable, even coverable. I hate to admit it, but as stupid as the plot is, you really start to feel for these characters. That makes Radio KAOS a success in rock opera terms, where the telescoped stories fail without a compensating weight of emotional identification via the music.

Amused to Death is his final, most grandiose, most Floyd-like and in many ways, mushiest and least fulfilling album. Musically, it attempts to marry the chorus-oriented songwriting on Radio KAOS with Hitchhiking’s extended prose. Lyrically, it’s a trans-apocalyptic story about television, war and humanity’s demise, though the details are left unclear; Waters speaks in allegory whenever possible, as on the three-part “What God Wants” and “Too Much Rope,” apparently about the experience of being moved to tears by a TV movie. “Watching TV,” a song with Don Henley about a Tiannamen protester’s physical beauty, is too much to stomach.

Amused to Death is nearly saved in its dénouement, where at last the songs begin to connect. “Three Wishes” works a surprisingly touching point about the melancholy beneath material desire; “It’s A Miracle” is the kind of croaking dirge Waters used throughout Hitchhiking, but here, his rebuttal to Reaganomics is more focused and funnier; “Amused to Death” proceeds leisurely from morning TV to the extinction of civilization over a power ballad that works both as satire and song.

Neither these, nor the spottily brilliant “Perfect Sense,” are enough to redeem the album of its worst moments. Neither do they make a convincing case for Waters as more than a noteworthy lyricist. The whole project remains risibly middlebrow. They do, in my opinion, prove Waters as an artist who learned from his errors, enjoyed partial success with unreasonably ambitious goals, and possessed more than a modicum of empathy for his subjects.

Amadou et Mariam, Welcome to Mali

They knew this record had legs, hence the title. Note the expansive syncretism that “world music” was supposed to embody in its era, but rarely did. Amadou and Mariam seem like prodigious music fans: at home with the elements of Euro dance, Carribean music and rock ‘n’ roll as well as their own Afro-pop territory, and confident enough to fuse them all in complex ways that go beyond referencing.

Okay, so their idea of rock is a little antique (signifiers: 4/4 beat, Hammond organ, pentatonic guitar solo) and to these ears, that adds a note of banality. But to these ears, the Malian song forms are exotic, and presumably the duo don’t find them so. Maybe predictably, I like the pastiche best when it slips — like the fiddle on “Bozos,” which starts out like a joke on country/western but does something entirely different with the melody instead. For reasons of rhythm, catchiness and mallets, “Ce N’est Pas Bon” and “Batoman” deserve special mention too.

El-P, I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead

Okay, I’ll admit a bias here: I discovered this during a pretty angry episode in my life, and it was perfect timing. I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead is a furious record, with El-P directing bile and lightning bolts at a slew of targets (war, gentrification, cokeheads, suicide, etc.), but maybe more importantly, identifying feelings secondary to anger (projection, alienation, self-doubt, etc.) that are unavoidable when you’re a reflective adult in the throes of it. It’s sometimes uncomfortable, even self-indulgent — but I’ve never been into the idea that music needs to be comfortable, universal and morally correct.

Sonically, it’s a paradigm shift from Fantastic Damage. The sound is still oppressive and mechanistic, constructed from dissonance and Bomb Squad-esque samples, but where its predecessor was all punchy, mono soundbites stacked on one another, ideal for blasting in cars, this one is cavernous, hi-fidelity — an urban evocation that works best when you can stand inside it. It’s not a headphone album as such, but it’s loaded with nuances and benefits from clarity and surround sound.

Here, El-P’s obsession with dystopia seems more like an idiosyncratic personal language than a delimiting subject matter; the lyrics feel closer to reality. It’s a thematic record, one whose subjects (mostly) reinforce one another, and ought to be heard together, like an old rock record. That said, “Tasmanian Pain Coaster” is also his best rap to date.

Pearl Jam, Vitalogy

As grunge heroes, Pearl Jam suffered from crossed purposes — stodgy classicists sometimes, half-assed formalists others, often the product of too many compromises to escape middle-of-the-road. On Ten and Vs., Ed Vedder’s lyrics were surprisingly impersonal, dwelling on the homeless, the insane and children of dysfunction. The sense of burden he injected into his performances seemed vicarious — well felt, to be sure, but not felt first-hand.

Vitalogy is a mess in classical terms. It never nails a style, departing in a half-dozen directions without capitalizing on any or, failing that, flowing elegantly from one to the next. It’s littered with incomplete experiments and outtakes. But where this approach would damage a less self-conscious band, it frees Pearl Jam from their usual surplus of study. Vedder’s immature scrawls (“Better Man” and, one assumes, “Whipping”) counterpoint Ament-Gossard’s trad-rock input (“Satan’s Bed”) nicely. Plus, the formalism here is sincerely odd (“Bugs”) and occasionally good as well (the faux-Miles intro to “Last Exit”). Pearl Jam would never achieve this balance of intentions again; probably it was an unrepeatable accident.

Slayer, Christ Illusion

2006’s Christ Illusion is the best thing any 80’s metal band has done in a decade. It’s like vintage thrash in sound, quality level and raison d’etre, but with a few tricks borrowed from post-death metal to add dimension. It’s also a full-blown protest record, nearly every song preoccupied with the folly and fallout of war, the horror of warmongering politics, and of course religion, on which they lay the blame for it all. Okay, that’s a simplistic assessment given Dick Cheney’s one-would-assume atheism, but it’s not ridiculous – pro-war popular sentiment did often seem inseparable from religious partisanship.

Slayer works in slight adjustments, not complete reinventions, and they’ve continued here — edging out the nu-metal flavor, pushing the pace of the songs up a notch. They’ve also got drummer Dave Lombardo back, and while his playing (more agile than forceful, a joy to hear) surely contributes to the record’s solidity, it’s worth adding that King and Hanneman have become very distinctive and peculiar guitar sculptors themselves — at the peak of their powers even — and these are some compelling sculptures, especially “Flesh Storm” and “Eyes of the Insane.”