Everybody Hates A Boring Ending

Speaking of Tears for Fears in my last post, I recieved TFF's latest (2004) album Everybody Loves a Happy Ending for Christmas. I consider myself to be well versed in the TFF catalog and I will say that this album was a shock. I found it difficult to make it through the first five songs and ended up turning the album off. This was very disturbing to me as I am a huge fan and found the music to be up-beat/happy and very simple...in otherwords; dissapointing. It reminded me in many ways of the worst of The Beatles. I said to my wife as we were listening "have I heard this before?" and she said "it sounds like The Beatles" and then I said "yeah, really bad Beatles". I will tell you so far that it does not contain the dark emotion and musical complexity that previous TFF albums have. Sadly, those are the reasons I have loved TFF's music.

I have now listened to the album in full and have decided that about half of it is faily good. I would not say that any of it is excellent but there are some songs that are catchy and that echo a little of TFF's past. The other half of the album, as said before, feels like a Beatles rip-off with some Earth, Wind, and Fire 70's funk/disco thrown in.

I found this review today and I thought it paralleled much of what I've been saying:

"This reunion album is a misbegotten mess. Where Orzabal’s pompous pronouncements about inner torment and the Human Condition once came with bounding New Wave hooks, they’ve now doubled their self-seriousness, dressing mediocre songs in shopworn Beatlesque flourishes, from baroque countermelodies to psychedelic distortion. Instead of sounding clever, it comes off as dreary and dated. (...) Sorry, fellas, but nobody loves a sad reprise."
-- David Hiltbrand, blender.com

That pretty much sums it up.