POP MUSIC REVIEW : Tears For Fears Gets ‘Em Smiling Again

Before releasing the sunny flower power/rhythm and blues hybrid “The Seeds of Love” album late last year, Tears For Fears easily was perceived as an earnest outfit. With weighted, sometimes ponderous lyrics inspired by Arthur Janov’s “primal scream” therapy and a blase attitude evinced toward their No. 1 1985 chart success, bandleaders Roland Orzibal and Curt Smith appeared intent on pursuing a cheerless, measured excellence.

Orange County fans had cause to know better. When Orzibal and Smith toured here five years ago, their county debut found them facing a sell-out Pacific Amphitheatre crowd of 18,000 (about five times the number they had just drawn in L.A.), all standing and shouting like taxes and homework had just been abolished. And Tears For Fears’ glum chums seemed awestruck by it all, turning in a set full of unabashed grins and enlivened music.

At Irvine Meadows Sunday evening, Smith recalled that performance as “probably the best show we’ve ever done, and certainly the most enjoyable.” And despite the dolorous classical recordings used as preshow filler, Smith, Orzibal and their eight backing musicians and singers made a run at repeating that earlier O.C. buoyancy.

Drawn evenly from “The Seeds of Love,” ’85’s “Songs From the Big Chair” and the 1983 debut “The Hurting,” the show’s 16 songs all were tooled up for the large, rhythm-happy band. Only sax player William Gregory remains from the ’85 outfit, and the new players apparently were picked for their ability to deal with a looser format, where the songs are not so strictly structured.

The chief asset of the reconstituted Tears is Oleta Adams, a splendid gospel-based soul singer who also boasts a strong jazz piano technique. It must have taken some courage for Smith and Orzibal, who have pleasant, round voices that work well within a limited range, to allow such an overpowering vocalist in their midst. They even left it to Adams to open the show with a solo version of the group’s “I Believe” and gave her solo spots on an unreleased gospel-tinged song and on the Beatles’ “Let It Be.”

Her presence did seem to have the salutary effect of compelling Smith and Orzibal to work more feeling and effort into their own singing (though it didn’t help that their vocals sometimes were lost in an over-loud drum mix). Adams’ influence was especially felt during “Mad World”--given a rumbling, shouted delivery--and the current “Badman’s Song” in which she and the boys traded verses.

“Badman’s Song” also offered the best example of the expanded polyglot approach some numbers were given onstage. It came off as a stylistic blending of early Elton John with Steely Dan, Kool and the Gang and Les McCann, the latter by way of Adam’s choppy, playfully voiced piano comping.

Along with the leavening influence of the songs from “The Seeds of Love,” several touches of whimsy are now institutionalized in the band’s set. Those included a “Pump Up the Volume” rap thrown into “Shout” by backing vocalist Biti Straughn and some brief, playful band riffing on Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water.”

Orzibal and Smith’s chief talent lies in their song crafting, and not all of the onstage action served those songs. The current “Woman in Chains” featured some heated vocal interplay between Orzibal and Adams, but the song went on far longer than the arrangement or individual solos warranted. “Famous Last Words,” with its lyrical reference to “When the Saints Go Marching In,” segued into that number, but their rendition wouldn’t necessarily help these people pass for New Orleanians.

While the closing “Shout” built from a spare vocal and percussion setting to a veritable rhythm riot, Orzibal and Smith’s vocals seemed a tad disengaged, as if they had grown tired of the tune.

But these moments were few in an otherwise excellent show where the peaks included the infectious “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” and the refined Beatlesque psychedelia of “Sowing the Seeds of Love.” On the latter song, Orzibal shaded from a Lennon-like “Walrus” vocal style on the verses to a likeness of McCartney’s falsetto “Hey Jude” monkey screams leading out of the song. Lest the Beatles connection be missed, Adams’ “Let It Be” followed, with a beautifully phrased, Aretha-styled vocal.