The seeds of love --- Tears For Fears --- 1989 (Fontana)
I was never a huge TFF fan: in the early eighties I found their particular brand of electronic pop/new-wave music soulless, empty and cold. Age changes opinion, and although I would still not class myself as a follower of theirs, I can now listen to “Tears roll down”, the greatest hits package, and like most if not all of the tracks on it. This album, however, marked a pretty fundamental shift away from synth-pop for the band, and they began to experiment with jazz, blues and outright rock. “The seeds of love” was still poppy enough though to be accessible by their legion of fans, who had grown up on the likes of “Pale shelter” and “Mad world”, and while it did not yield such hugely successful singles as the previous “Songs from the big chair”, it still went to number one and was highly acclaimed by critics.
There are only eight tracks on this album, but most of them are quite long, few under six minutes and one is over eight. It kicks off with “Woman in chains”, a slow, stately affair decrying the lack of equality between men and women in today's society:
I”It's a world gone crazy/ Keeps women in chains.” Curt Smith and Roland Orzabel --- who ARE Tears For Fears --- are joined on this opener by Oleta Adams, who would go on to have a very successful recording career herself. The song is carried on jangling guitar and synth, with powerful drums provided by none other than Phil Collins. Halfway through the electric guitar kicks in in no uncertain fashion and the song gets a little heavier.
On lead vocals, Roland Orzabal is on top form, and this is nowhere more in evidence than in the next track, the longest at just over eight and a half minutes. “Badman's song” opens with jazzy, tricky piano with trumpet and takes on a somewhat gospel-like feel as it relates the confession of a man deemed a desperado and a “bad man”. The jazz influences are very prevalent here, especially in the piano and bass part about halfway through. The song changes though, going from reasonably fast to a slow blues vibe before picking up speed again to the end.
The title track is a nod back to the Beatles circa “Yellow Submarine”, with its multi-tracked vocals and psychedelic sound and somewhat nonsense lyrics, rolling drums and trumpets. The album sleeve reflects this too, in a pretty hippy-style drawing. Guitar takes something of a backseat here to brass and keyboards, but comes back into its own for “Advice for the young at heart”, perhaps the most commerical track on the album, and one of the four singles to be released from it. A faster, poppier track than those which had gone before, it's also one of the two shortest, at just over four and a half minutes long. In addition, it's the only one on the album on which Curt Smith takes lead vocals. It skips along on a nice piano and guitar melody, sort of mid-paced (haven't used that expression for a while now!), very catchy. Nice guitar solo too, the first to be heard on the album.
In contrast, “Standing on the corner of the third world” is much slower, almost ambient, with the instrumentation kept intentionally sparse until brass blasts in and the backing vocals lift the song, accompanied by shivering harmonica and ending on a jazzy, dissonant fade. “Swords and knives” maintains the slow pace, piano and organ the vehicle for the tune for the opening of the track, which then sparks into life halfway and becomes quite a rocky tune, guitar and keyboard and thumping drums fading out at the end, when it slows right down again.
The penultimate track, “Year of the knife”, is recorded as if live, but I doubt it is. It knocks things up a gear or two, getting quite frenetic in places, and is the second-longest on the album at just under seven minutes. Great backing vocals give the song real heart, with the drums pounding the beat away and driving the piece onwards. It's the last fast track, and fades directly into the powerful yet undestated closer, “Famous last words”, with its almost muttered vocal and beautiful string arrangement (probably thanks to that Fairlight controller Roland is using) and touching lyric:
”As the day meets the night/ We will sit by candlelight/ We will march, we will sing/ When the saints go marching in/ And we will carry war no more.” There's a powerful explosion of instruments in the middle, an impassioned vocal from Roland, and then it all fades away very quietly, finishing the album very nicely.
“The seeds of love” is another one of those often rare albums that I can listen to all the way through without skipping a track, or at least, without wanting to. Every track on it is gold, and as a cohesive whole it really is excellent. Even if you're not into TFF --- like me --- it's a damn good album, and worth a listen.
TRACKLISTING
1. Woman in chains
2. Badman's song
3. Sowing the seeds of love
4. Advice for the young at heart
5. Standing on the corner of the third world
6. Swords and knives
7. Year of the knife
8. Famous last words.