Eighties pop threw up lots of weird and wonderful phenomena but few were as gloriously unlikely as Tears for Fears. Two council estate teenagers from broken homes who met in Bath, they channelled difficult childhoods, Duran Duran and Gary Numan-esque synthpop and lyrics inspired by Arthur Janov’s psychology book The Primal Scream into sumptuously melancholy songs that helped them sell more than 30m albums.
Today, the sulky teens have become mature 57-year-olds with their greying hair either cropped short (singer-bassist ) or tied back (singer-guitarist Roland Orzabal). But they remain relevant. Michael Andrews and Gary Jules’s cover of Mad World (from the Donnie Darko soundtrack) took the song to No 1 in 2003, 20 years after the release of the original. Weezer have just covered another Tears for Fears smash, Everybody Wants to Rule the World, while tonight the duo stride on to the sound of Lorde’s version of the same song, before launching into the original, ever so subtly beefed up by modern technology and sounding as fresh as ever.
They’re certainly not afraid to play their aces early. Sowing the Seeds of Love, from 1989, is a joyous homage to the psychedelic-era Beatles, and the Fab Four’s home town show their appreciation with a rapturous singalong. The unusually paced setlist avoids the traditional run of hits towards the end, familiar to so many arena acts, and instead ensures that a copper-bottomed classic arrives every few minutes.
It isn’t long before clouds of melancholy appear, with a quartet from the band’s 1983 debut album, The Hurting. Synth-driven hits Pale Shelter and Change sound utterly spellbinding. Mad World packs Janov’s idea that nightmares release tension into a killer hook (“The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had”). And Memories Fade (“but the scars remain”), soulfully sung by Orzabal, suggests that teenage angst has nothing on its fiftysomething counterpart. They didn’t speak to each other for over a decade after a 1990 split. And these first UK dates for years were postponed in 2018 after the death of Orzabal’s wife.
And yet, while the songs sound convincingly dark when needed, there are smiles on stage, a moment of guitar duelling and some crowd banter. Orzabal makes cheeky jibes about football before gossamer-voiced Smith adopts his best impression of a Scouse accent to quip: “When I first came to Liverpool, I thought people were shouting ‘Cat! Cat!’” [not “Curt! Curt!”].
The 90-minute set veers from blissfully gloomy synth melodrama to Beatles-y power pop and could easily be longer – perhaps losing 2004’s workaday Everybody Loves a Happy Ending but gaining more of those uplifting songs about depressing things: say The Hurting, or Ideas As Opiates.
Radiohead’s Creep initially seems an odd choice of song to cover but the self-loathing lyrics and soaring tune could be straight from their own oeuvre. Woman In Chains – an Orzabal duet with spectral-voiced backing vocalist Carina Round – is another highlight, a beautiful cry against the patriarchy. Head Over Heels is as dizzying a melody as they ever came up with. And then the grand finale of Shout sets the entire arena bellowing “Shout, shout, let it all out!” It’s like a mass exercise in primal scream therapy, but this time more in joy than pain.
• At Motorpoint Arena, Cardiff, then touring until 13 February.
