I've been what you might refer to as a reluctant Tears For Fears fan for most of my life. Like with Crowded House, it wasn't until recently that I could actually admit that my musical tastes have pretty much circulated around these two bands all along, even if my tastes diverge from them as frequently as they do mesh with them. Being a "metal guy" in high school, it was pretty much totally uncool to say how much I truly loved Crowded House's "Don't Dream It's Over" and Tears For Fears "Head Over Heels," but thankfully I can't even see a reason to find shame in admitting that now. I was a stupid high school kid who swore up and down that Def Leppard was the best band in the world, even while knowing that "Dont' Dream" was just about the most gorgeous piece of songwriting I'd ever heard - that's just not cool to admit. That's not to slight Def Lep at all - I'm just saying, take a look at my collection and see which two of the three bands mentioned above still have a home in my collection. And why wouldn't they? Those two songs are damn near the premier examples of the perfect pop song, outside of, say, the output of a little Liverpool band in the 60s.

I know Tears For Fears ended for a lot of people with 1989's The Seeds Of Love, what with Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal getting all Pink Floyd, as Smith took off for a solo career and Orzabal continued on with the "band." Fans pretty much turned a deaf ear to his two offerings, but as with all things of this nature, I have to ask myself that if they didn't have the burder of living up to the TFF moniker, wouldn't most fans have loved them? Most likely - they really weren't all that much different than the more serious pieces on Seeds Of Love, if maybe they indulged in the big sappy balladeering too much. Well, damn, who cares too much when you've got the glorious golden pipes of Roland Orzabal pushing them forward?

I was a little excited to hear the boys mended whatever likely meaningless differences had separated them and were at work on a new album. But I also got the usual worries that arise from something like this - is this a cash-in on the currently "in" status of 80s music, an album most likely filled with very tiresome and hackneyed filler and one hopefully Big Hit, or is this an album of music that simple had to be made, needed to be made, filtered down from the ether to the TFF teammates who, in dramatic 80s teen-flick fashion, made a mad dash to each other after the Big Revelation woke them from their depressed slumbers (and probably through likely rain-slicked streets, you know?)