Description
Seventeen years after their last album, ‘The Tipping Point’ is a 10-song collection riven with personal tragedy and political upheaval. Curt Smith – who formed the band with Roland Orzabal as teenagers in Bath in 1981 – told NME that the years of turmoil, which includes the tragic death of Orzabal’s wife in 2017, “gave us a lot to write about”.
Smith said: “‘No Small Thing’ was a song myself and Roland wrote together. It was the very beginning of 2020 and we were at this point where we had effectively an album’s worth of material that we didn’t particularly like – and we were trying to find a direction. “So we decided for the first time since we were 18-years-old to sit in a room, both of us with acoustic guitars, and try and write something. It’s the opening track on the album and an important one in that it gave us a direction, but because of the way we approached it, it sounds more Johnny Cash than Tears For Fears.” If you can find nothing to write about after what we went through in the past few years – personally, with Roland’s wife passing and also globally, then you shouldn’t be songwriters. It’s been a bunch of years with a lot of turmoil – personally as well as politically – which has given us a lot to write about.”
