194. Tears For Fears
Spitfire Grounds Canterbury
23 June 2019
This was the first time my oldest friend and I had ventured to Canterbury, a city famed for its cathedral, its Chaucer pilgrims, and, as we discovered, a bristling trade in late night, town centre violence. We’d booked ourselves into what the hotel website described as “a boutique retreat”, which turned out to mean “room with a Nespresso machine and three gin minibar options.” Nevertheless, spirits were high as we ventured to Kent County Cricket’s side-field, unceremoniously parked behind some new-build flats whose residents were either barbequing on their balconies, looking forward to a free show, or glowering at us through their twitching curtains. The weather was good, the crowd were already half-pickled on Pimm’s, and Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith, the original thinking man’s pop duo, were finally back on home soil, armed with four decades of melancholic anthems.
Neither of us had seen this band, but The Hurting was an album that inhabited our teenage playlists in a big way. However, the band stopped touring the UK for a long period after they “conquered” America, became a “studio band”, stopped speaking to each other and then they just stopped. We caught the tail end of the support act, Alison Moyet who was trumpeting out her Yazoo and solo hits. I was never a big fan of either, but they carried enough nostalgic muscle memory to get us in the mood.
By the time the band strode onto the stage, the sun was dipping over Kent, casting a golden glow over several thousand slightly sunburnt nostalgists. The opening bars of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”, not their version of it, but Lorde’s gentle reimagining of that song, shimmered out, bleeding seamlessly into the original version with that familiar guitar arpeggio heralding its arrival; the place erupted; a sound that was equal parts euphoria and relief that they’d actually turned up.
What is very apparent to us both is that Tears for Fears in 2019 aren’t Eighties relics peddling heritage pop; they’re immaculate craftsmen revisiting songs built to last. Curt still looks absurdly ageless, whilst Roland, leonine and grinning, commands the stage like looking more like a German architect with each passing year. They seem genuinely pleased to be there, and, perhaps more importantly, pleased to be there together.
The setlist was a perfect balance of the sublime and the sentimental. “Mad World” still devastating after all these years. “Sowing the Seeds of Love” bloomed in technicolour, part Beatles pastiche, part psychedelic sermon. And when they launched into “Pale Shelter”, we were transported straight back to 1983 when pop could still be clever. The cover of Radiohead’s “Creep”, re-imagined by this synth pop duo, was revelatory, Orzabel’s distinctive, commanding baritone weaving with Curt’s tenor.
The band were tight, the visuals understated but elegant, and the sound, unusually for an outdoor gig, was pristine. Even the flat dwellers, whose extended back garden we had invaded, seemed to be enjoying themselves, a few of them coaxed out to dance on their balconies.
Of course, they closed on “Shout.” Still an anthem, still cathartic, still capable of making grown men punch the air without irony. Thousands of voices joined in, a collective primal therapy under a Kentish sky and for a few glorious minutes the entire ground was united in one euphoric, slightly middle-aged roar.