Tears For Fears
The Tipping Point
(Concord)
★★★★

SYNTH pop rock stalwarts Tears for Fears’ seventh studio album has been a long time coming — 18 years to be precise — and it is a welcome return. 

Songs range from heartbreak — title track The Tipping Point is about the death of joint singer/guitarist and chief songwriter Roland Orzabal’s first wife — to smashing the patriarchy; Break The Man is about a woman taking control and making the world a better place.

There are echoes of earlier albums. My Demons harks back to the band’s Songs from the Big Chair era, but there are also novel approaches, namely the simple pared back opening of No Small Thing which then segues into a musical maelstrom. 

Please Be Happy returns to the band’s 1960s influences, Master Plan actually cites both the Beatles and the Stones while evoking Radiohead and mixing the subtle and bombastic to very good effect. 

Definitely an album worth shouting about.

Blood Red Shoes
Ghosts on Tape
(Veleten Records/Jazz Life)
★★★

FOR a band that have built their reputation on touring, the impact of coronavirus on the live music scene could have spelled the end of garage rock stalwarts Blood Red Shoes.

However, the duo — guitarist Laura-Mary Carter and drummer Steven Ansell have recently released their sixth studio album that takes the band’s sound away from its blistering punk pop riffs.  

Opening track Comply channels Strokes like vocals and a challenge to authority, there’s more synth in the mix in Morbid Fascination and Carter’s voice is pure and uplifting, even if the sound is a bit too reminiscent of Shirley Manson of Garbage at times. 

A few too many tracks are nondescript. 

Even with some glam rock stomps and hints of Little Boots, it does sound a bit too confused, with some vocals overproduced and distorted. 

There’s much to like, but tighter production and direction would have made the album stand out more.

The Mysterines
Reeling
(Fiction)
★★★★

THE debut album from Liverpool’s The Mysterines rocks out for all the right reasons.

Across 13 blues tinged grunge rock tracks there’s much to admire all the moreso as lead singer/songwriter Lia Metcalfe and the rest of the band are barely out of their teens. 

Album opener Life’s a Bitch (But I Like it So Much) sets the stall, coming across like a combination of Hole, Larkin Poe and The Subways with a good dose of grunge. 

Old Friends/Die Hard evokes Depeche Mode circa Personal Jesus with guitar to the fore, while Under Your Skin starts slow, with just a voice, and then builds and builds. It’s dirty, decadent, delightful and cool hard blues rock at its best. 

Even when the pace is slowed down — final track The Confession Song for example — there’s an edge that shows musical mastery in the making.

Sharp lyrics, rocking riffs, sass aplenty, what’s not to like.