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The Seeds of Love

Tears for Fears - The Seeds of Love Audio CD

A fair review of the Tears for Fears "The Seeds of Love" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all Tears for Fears reviews here, or go back to the Tears for Fears tabs.

Band: Tears for Fears
Title: The Seeds of Love
Rating:

Release Date: 1999-08-03
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Woman in Chains 2: Badman's Song 3: Sowing the Seeds of Love 4: Advice for the Young at Heart 5: Standing On the Corner of the Third World 6: Swords and Knives 7: Year of the Knife 8: Famous Last Words 9: Tears Roll Down [*] 10: Always in the Past [*] 11: Music for Tables [*] 12: Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams [*]

TFF Brings in Oleta Adams
Oleta was quite appreciative with the duo as she later won a Grammy for her solo release. "The Seeds of Love" is TFF's "Sargent Pepper" It's an excellent jazzy sounding recording where TFF brings in Oleta Adams out of a night club. She brought a soulful and bluesy sound to "The Seeds of Love". Highlights:

Woman in Chains- Feminist's tune on their struggles. Excellent!!
Badman Song- Oleta at her jazzy best.
Swords and Knives- Typical TFF tune.
Year the Knife- A little edgy tune.

The recordings of "The Seeds of Love" are smooth and crisp as more real instruments were brought in versus a using an electronic synthesizer as a base for their recordings. I thought this was their 3rd best release to end a phenomenal decade. .

Roland and Curt mature
"Big Chair" was TFF breakthrough and opened many more doors than "The Hurting" had a few years earlier. This album shows the maturity and growth one would expect from artists stretching their imagination and finding new ways of expression. It was only with the success of "Big Chair" that they were allowed to progress towards "The Seeds Of Love", and what a progression it was. Many have claimed this album leans more towards an adult-contemporary sound, but I beg to differ. I think it shows a maturity and growth in both Roland and Curt's songwriting. They began accompanying their already world-weary lyrics with a more sophistcated musical backdrop, and began to stretch these ideas to the limit. This is probably TFF most progressive record, with hints of jazz, samba, and beatle-esque pop. It is also TFF first complete record, that requires the listener to listen from beginning to end, in order to get the full impact. For those looking for songwriting at its most tuneful and sophistcated, then "The Seeds Of Love" is well worth a listen. .

A masterpiece
While their previous album (Songs from the Big Chair) gave the band a succession of memorable hit singles, The Seeds of Love shows Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal reaching their musical peak. The Seeds of Love is Tears for Fears' masterpiece. Also worth noting is the inclusion of then unknown gospel singer Oleta Adams, whose soulful vocals added another great dimension to their sound. The song that everyone knows here is "Sowing the Seeds of Love", a brilliant track that may be the most complex hit single of recent times. From its Beatlesque arrangements and intelligent lyrics to the soaring vocals of both Orzabal and Smith, this, along with "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" and "Shout", is among the best songs penned in the `80s. Just as impressive musically is the excellent "Badman's Song", where Smith, Orzabal, and Adams trade vocals throughout as the tune bounces from progressive rock to gospel to jazz before reaching its climactic end. "Advice for the Young at Heart", an excellent new wave tune with a great lead vocal from Smith, is the best of `80s British pop and should have been a huge hit. Another highlight is the awesome "Swords and Knives", another dramatic tune with a lot of twists and turns and great guitar work from Orzabal. The rest of the tunes are nearly as impressive as the opener "Woman in Chains" is laid back and features great camaraderie between Orzabal and Adams while "The Year of the Knife" is driving and quite heavy. "Standing on the Corner of the Third World" is another great tune, more steeped in jazz than rock, and sounds like something Sting would have recorded on . . . Nothing Like The Sun. "Famous Last Words" is a gentle tune that closes out the original album nicely. Even the bonus tracks here are very good as "Music for Tables" is a great jazz instrumental while "Tears Roll Down" is very heavy on the percussion and resembles their more new wave material. All told, The Seeds of Love shows Tears for Fears maturing from a great `80s pop/new wave outfit to a band that would have been great in any era. Highest recommendation. .

Not Their Best, But Better Than The Rest
I love their over production, attention to detail, overlayering of tracks, and the general feel of their music. I love Tears for Fears. They represent the best of the 80's, of that there is no doubt. Seeds is not their best album, but it is a spectacular blend of many styles and has an overall feeling of otherworldliness. It seems that TFF is so often forgotten by MTV and VH1 when they speak of the eighties. All the hairband trash going down at that time and then you had the beauty and thoughfulness of TFF. I personally think that Everbody Wants To Rule the World was the best video and best song of the eighties (I know it was on Big Chair). Seeds is a very complex Beatles infused outing and worth every penny to own. I just wish these two would keep creating more music in this time of so much stuff being produced that is not worth listening to. .

Not Quite Yer Average 80s Album

The Seeds of Love definitely represents those early turning points when musicians were yearning for that 1960s organic feeling - something that the music press & critics of the late 1980s were yet to digest until alternative rock came along in 1991, and retro was back in. It was 1989, and I guess most of the thinking musicians were fed up with operatic sequencers and sunny shiny pop fodder of the second leg of that decade. The fate of SOL, though commercially still successful, was akin to Simple Minds' Street Fighting Years. Music critics panned it, and labelled such works as 'pretentious', 'over-produced'. You name it.

The songs on SOL are comparably less concise than TFF's two previous brilliant outings, and it demonstrates another musical leap forward. Though I personally like all TFF albums, SOL is the one I always come back to listening.

Sowing the Seeds of Love:
this song attempts to condense everything 1967 into one pop song - call it a rewritten version of 'I am the Walrus' / 'Penny Lane' / 'Hello Goodbye' all meshed together into one. Despite the catchy chorus that everyone remembers well, it's surprisingly the verses, the interludes and the popping musical details that makes this song even more interesting. Orchestral crescendos, leaping vocoder passages, leslie'd hammond organs. It's over-produced pop at its very best.

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You can see a complete list of all Tears for Fears discography, or go back to the Tears for Fears tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.