jeff@dciem.UUCP (Jeff Richardson) (03/12/85)
Quite often, a new group will make an excellent and promising debut album,
only to follow it with an album that is disappointing because it's just more
of the same but not as good. (Big Country and A Flock Of Seagulls are two
recent examples I can think of.) For this reason, I sometimes think twice
about buying a group's second album, no matter how good their first was, and
I'm sure there are other people who feel the same way. If you were worried
that Tears For Fears, one of 1983's best new groups, might fall into this rut,
fear no more. Their second album is even better than their first!
"Songs From The Big Chair" is definitely not just more of the same thing
they gave us on "The Hurting". I don't mean to say that they have undergone
a change of direction. More accurately, they've branched out. You'll find
a much greater variety of music on the new album, possibly because Roland
Orzabal has allowed the other band members and producer Chris Hughes assist
him with the songwriting. (He wrote the entire first album himself.)
You may have heard the two pre-released singles, "Mothers Talk" and "Shout".
They probably give you a fairly good indication of the quality of the album,
(They certainly aren't any better than the album as a whole), but not
of its style. Although the songs are all very different, there's a kind of
laid-back feeling throughout most of the album similar to the feeling of
Pink Floyd's "Dark Side Of The Moon". There are other similarities too:
The songs on side two flow very easily into each other, and "Head Over Heels"
is both preceded and followed by parts of "Broken" in the same way that
Dark Side's "On The Run" and "Time" are framed by parts of "Breathe".
Also, although "Songs From The Big Chair" is the type of music that appeals
mainly to the non-top 40 listener, as "Dark Side" was, it has the opportunity
of reaching a much larger audience because it has two songs, "Shout" and
"Everybody Wants To Rule The World", which have the potential to turn on
both the top 40 crowd and the non-top 40 listeners in the same way that
"Money" did. Don't get me wrong though, it's by no means a rip-off of "Dark
Side". Although it contains many of the elements that made 70's progressive
rock great (There are no long, varied pieces, but would you settle for short,
varied pieces?), it's fresh and original and could not have been made in any
other era. I've only listened to it three times, and I know that's a bit early
to be calling it the Dark Side of the eighties, but I really think it's that
good. I can only think of one thing wrong with it: The last song sounds as
if it's going to go somewhere, but instead it just repeats. It's still a
terrific song though, and heard with the rest of the second side it sounds even
better. This album is not to be missed.
--
Jeff Richardson, DCIEM, Toronto (416) 635-2073
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