In St. Louis, where classic rock is king, legacy acts regularly fill our amphitheaters, arenas and stadiums, although those shows tend to come from the kinds of devil-horned KSHE-approved guitar-slinging acts that dominated ’70s and ’80s arena rawk. Lately, though, the nostalgic stock has been rising for a different classic-rock phylum: the synthy new-wavey Second British Invasion bands of the MTV era. Metalheads always hated them, but the New Romantic groups nonetheless hit the top of the charts and heavy radio and video rotation back in the Gorbachev years and are now getting their turn at the big payday shed tours and festival spots.
The Cure is in the middle of its biggest, highest-grossing tour ever. Depeche Mode, hot off a Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction, is back in arenas worldwide. Culture Club is back touring hockey arenas with fellow synth-pop throwback Howard Jones. Duran Duran is headlining Louisville’s massive Bourbon & Beyond Festival. Modern English scored a spot on our own Evolution Festival coming up next month.
Which brings us to Tears For Fears, who brought The Tipping Point Part II Tour to Hollywood Casino Amphitheatre on Thursday night. Headlining a 20,000-seat venue is a substantial upgrade for a band that last played St. Louis as an opening act (supporting Hall and Oates at Enterprise in 2017). But here it was, and while the lawn had plenty of open real estate, the seated pavilion was nearly full of middle-aged fans who have apparently indoctrinated their children in fairly significant numbers.
So, yes, of course, Tears For Fears founders Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith, both now in their early sixties, played all the hits, busting out faithful versions of “Everybody Wants to Rule World” (given a recent boost from its appearance on Stranger Things), “Sowing the Seeds of Love” and “Head Over Heels.” At the same time, the band didn’t mind playing lesser-known songs, like the gorgeous 2004 non-single “Secret World,” which worked in a snippet from Paul McCartney’s “Let ‘Em In,” a rhythmic cousin of its own song.
Moreover, nostalgists beware: Tears For Fears would like to go ahead and count as relevant, thank you very much, touring as the duo is behind last year’s The Tipping Point, its very fine comeback album, the first in 18 years. The band played a whopping six of the album’s 10 songs, including four in a row mid-set, a strategy that worked given the strengths of songs like meditative “Long, Long, Long Time” and the lush, hook-heavy “Break the Man.”
“It’s good to be back here. I love this place,” Orzabal told the crowd. “I’ve had some amazing experiences in St. Louis. I can’t go into the details.” Whether or not he says that to all the cities, the audience loved the band right back, going so far as pretending that bassist Curt Smith can sing. Smith is a beloved figure, obviously, to Tears For Fans, but Smith struggled at times with thin, gasping vocals on classics like “Mad World” and “Pale Shelter.”
Orzabal, on the other hand, who looks-wise has entered his Leon Russell phase, maintains a powerful vocal command, even hitting some high falsetto notes throughout the night. Then again, the evening’s most lovely vocals came courtesy of backup singer Carina Round whose rendition of “Suffer the Children” accompanied by only piano was the show’s prettiest passage.
The band also sank some serious bread into the stage production with a spiral lighting rig that looked like part of the Large Hadron Collider surrounding a round video screen reminiscent of the old Pink Floyd Division Bell setup, and when those lights started spinning on songs like “My Demons,” it was damn near scary. “Badman’s Song,” another tune to prominently feature Round’s ethereal vocals, gave the six-piece band, including terrific Telecaster-ist Charlton Pettus, keyboardist Doug Petty and drummer Jamey Wallum, room to expand during the set’s jazziest, funkiest arrangements.
And “Shout”? Last, of course, following the night’s sole cover, which turned out to be Radiohead’s “Creep,” second to only Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” as the world’s most groan-inducingly overplayed cover song. But even if these are the things you can do without, once “Shout” hit, the audience was jumping for joy, and the band gave them refrain after refrain after refrain to let it all out.
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