#187
May 1980 LISTENING POST DISCOVERY
Graduate
Acting My Age
Genre: Power Pop
4.25 out of 5
Highlights:
Acting My Age
Shut Up
Watching Your World
Love That is Bad
Julie Julie
Graduate was the opening band for Judie Tzuke in 1980.
Oh and..what else…?
Lemme check my notes…
Oh, yeah.
Graduate is Roland Orzibal and Curt Smith’s first band! Umm..wha…?
I was not expecting to learn that Tears for Fears basically started off as a New Wave Power Pop outfit.
Ok, how are the songs?
Umm…great? I even like the sole Smith penned track, “Sick and Tired”. I’m not versed enough in T4Fs to know what his contribution was to their oeuvre but it’s a fine little angular New Waver with a terrific synth solo instead of a lead guitar which suggests the direction he and Roland might be headed in a couple years.
In fact, the whole album is like two sounds fighting each other for dominance as I could expect, sometimes sounding like Housemartins (Which I hear on “Ever Met a Day”), then like Cheap Trick with keyboards (“Shut Up”) and then other times like Beatles adherents. This makes sense, these guys are 19 years old and still finding their voices. If you’re 19 in 1980 you had the Beatles injected into your veins but came of age during the prog-rock 70s. And that’s what is coming out here. A bit confused but also pretty damned self-assured.
This is one of those records that you think is about to let you down and, dammit, it just doesn’t. I thought it might mete out at 3.75 but, then after, “Love That is Bad” and “Julie Julie” it vaulted into the 4s.
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