The 1980 Listening Post - Graduate - Acting My Age

Graduate - Acting My Age

#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. 

https://music.apple.com/us/album/acting-my-age/1437177838

The 1985 Listening Post -Tears for Fears - Songs from the Big Chair

Tears for Fears - Songs from the Big Chair

#47

February 25 1985

Tears for Fears

Songs from the Big Chair

4.5 out of 5

Highlights:

Shout

Everybody Wants to Rule the World

Mother’s Talk

Head Over Heels

Did Roland Orzabal get therapy? I mean, duh, but, to go from the anguish of The Hurting to the catharsis of Big Chair is really something to behold. 

Dennis Miller’s use of “Everybody wants to Rule the World” for his 90s talk show almost ruined that song for me, even now I can’t divorce the two. Shame, really. 

I’d only heard “Head Over Heels” as a single but to hear it in context of the album, bleeding in from “Broken”, it’s really a piece of mastery.

Big Chair is a much more hopeful record than The Hurting. It’s less a collection of songs than it is an experience.

I’m glad I finally heard it. 

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/songs-from-the-big-chair/936842478

The 1983 Listening Post - Tears for Fears - The Hurting

Tears for Fears - The Hurting

Tears for Fears
The Hurting
4.5 Stars

I knew the singles but I guess I was afraid of the Big Chair…and the big hair.
Mad World’s better known for the moody cover by Gary Jules in 2001 but I actually prefer the schizophrenic T4F version. It’s supposed to be evocative and menacing and it is all that and more because it’s also deceptively happy and this band is decidedly NOT happy., as evidenced by Mad World’s doppelgänger, The Prisoner.
They remind me a lot of Simple Minds but, somehow, Tears managed to get hit singles out of their psychosis where Simple Minds had to suffer through fans who just wanted the Breakfast Club song and they were oh so much better and more interesting than just that.
This album lives up to the band’s name. The whole thing is new wave pop rock catharsis.

Highlights:
The Hurting
Mad World
Pale Shelter
Watch Me Bleed
Change
The Prisoner