Eighteen years since their last studio album, Tears for Fears finally released their new album, The Tipping Point. The Tipping Point World Tour is a celebration of the new album that many fans spent over a decade waiting for. The crowd at Sugarland Financial Center on Wednesday, May 25, were beaming with anticipation for Tears for Fear and their opener, Garbage, who also released a new studio album in 2021 entitled, No Gods No Masters.
As Garbage started their set, the stage became flooded with an ominous deep purple hue as eerie music began to play. Garbage slowly walked on stage and the crowd erupted in a standing ovation. Shirley Manson, the vocalist of Garbage, strutted out in a beautiful oversized black tulle dress, compact boots, and with bright orange tone red hair.Garbage opened the show with their hit single, Automatic Systematic Habit, from their fifth studio album, Not Your Kind of People. Garbage gave an intoxicating performance. They performed many hit singles including, Stupid Girl, Special, Cherry Lips and Wicked Ways. The energy from Garbage and the crowd during their performance of Only Happy When it Rains was so captivating as she let the audience sing almost the entire song. Not a lyric was missed as Shirley stood there for a second speechless and said “Thank you very much, I love hearing you sing, it’s just the best feeling in the world” Garbage ended their set with, You Look So Fine, which included an outro of Dreams by Fleetwood Mac. Garbage electrifying performance set the precedent for Tears for Fears.
Roland Orzabal, opened the Tears for Fears set with a Bob Dylan-esque song entitled No Small Thing from their new studio album. Everyone stood in awe as Roland sang with passion and liberation. Wrapping up the first song Roland announced “ We are doubly excited because we’ve got a new album, it’s called the Tipping Point, an album that took about seven years to make, lots of ups and downs, lots of starts and stops, three different record companies, two management companies, a lot of croissants and meditation…did I say meditation. We will be playing a lot of songs from that album tonight.” As Roland promised, Tears for Fears sang multiple songs from The Tipping Point album, the one that stood out to me the most was My Demons. My Demons is more of a heavy and electronic rock sounding single, think Depeche Mode. The performance started with an aura of red lights and an electronic beat alongside white strobe lights that pulsated as the beat dropped in the chorus. The entire song in general was very trance-like and mesmerizing, especially when Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith harmonized together in the chorus. Of course, Tears for Fears also performed a multitude of their hit singles including, Everybody Wants to Rule the World, Sowing the Seeds of Love, Mad World, Pale Shelter, just to name a few. My all-time favorite was the performance of Head Over Heels/Broken. All of the stage lights were off and out of nowhere we were hit with neon green and purple lights as the famous Lydian-Scale piano intro to Head Over Heels started the song. I can not put into words how surrealistic this performance felt. It felt like I was dreaming. Everything was just so perfect. Curt Smith did a fantastic performance bringing us back into that moment in time. To put in perspective, this song was released in 1985. That was thirty-seven years ago, and Curt sounded exactly the same! Truly magnificent. Tears for Fears ended the show with Shout, which is probably their most famous song with over 150 million views on youtube alone.
Overall, this might have been one of my favorite concerts of all time. Tears for Fears and Garbage really out did themselves. Something about musicians still performing together in-sync twenty plus years later is so brilliant and admiring to see. If you have not already done so, Listen to the new Tears for Fears Album, The Tipping Point.
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