After ruling the ’80s, Tears for Fears is back. Tour kicks off at Cincinnati’s Riverbend

For a band that so vividly associated with 1980s pop, Tears for Fears has always had its creative mind in the here and now. It’s just that sometimes its idea of “modern” hasn’t always fallen in line with everyone else’s definition. Hence, the creation, gestation and the long road to release of “The Tipping Point,” the first album of new music by the British-bred duo of Roland Orzabel and Curt Smith in over 17 years.

Why so long? Name it: Life. Death. Art. Commerce. Oh, yes. A pandemic.

“It feels great to have finally finished the record and, obviously, a relief,” said Smith, who will open Tears for Fears’ current tour with Orzabel on May 20 at Riverbend Music Center in Cincinnati. “It was, at times, a painful process, but I think what came of that was an album that really has the depth we desire from a record. In that sense, without all the angst and pain that led up to us finishing the album, I don’t think it would have been an album of this quality. I mean, it would still musically be good, but it wouldn’t have the depth. The fact we channeled all those things we went through leading up to this record into the album makes it a lot more poignant to me.”

The journey of “The Tipping Point” began eight years ago when Orzabel and Smith were encouraged by their record label and management to adjust stylistically to the times – a somewhat curious request given how the biggest Tears for Fears hits – “Mad World,” “Shout” and especially 1985’s “Everybody Wants to Rule World” reflected a pop flair and often sobering narrative that sounded fashioned for the times. The corporate rock world, as it turned out, demanded more.

“We wanted new material without really a conscious decision about what that material should be. The unfortunate thing for us at the time was we were signed to a record label and a management company that really wanted us to do one thing, which was to go and write with modern hit songwriters and producers to make this sort of modern record that maybe fit into the marketplace today, whatever that means. And we set about doing that over the course of a few years in bits and ended up with this album that neither of us felt was representative of us.

“It was a lot of attempts at a modern sounding song. They were all done on different sessions. There was no cogency to it. There was no depth to it, as far as I was concerned. So we ended up buying that record from the label so that they wouldn’t release it, leaving the label and leaving our management company. We were then left with just myself and Roland.

“We sat down at the end of 2019 to discuss whether it was worth finishing the album and, if we felt it was, what would that album be? That’s where ‘The Tipping Point,’ the album you hear now, really started. We went back over the songs we had previously recorded to see if there were any we wanted to keep. We didn’t particularly like the recordings, but decided there were five songs we liked just as songs. So we kept those and set about writing the other half of the album.

“That was at the beginning of 2020 and then lockdown happened. Unfortunately, lockdown happened when Roland was in England and I was in Los Angeles. We were just sending files backwards and forwards with song ideas so that by the time Roland got back to America at the end of August, we had an idea of what we wanted to do.”

But before that, during the album’s initial recording sessions, life intervened. While topicality reigns on “The Tipping Point,” especially during the busting of patriarchy bonds in “Break the Man,” several songs address the 2017 death of Orzabel’s wife of 35 years, Caroline. “Life is cruel, life is tough,” he sings in unison with Smith during the album’s title song. “Life is crazy, then it all turns to dust.”

“We’re both people who, in times of crisis, find our way by writing a song. That’s what we do, that’s what we’ve always done with all of our previous material, as well. In that sense, this comes naturally to us. We need the music to touch us personally.”

Ironically, the songs of “The Tipping Point” sound remarkably modern. Then again, so does a promotional performance of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” that made the rounds on TV (specifically, for “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert”) around the release of “The Tipping Point” in February. Part of that stems from the efficient orchestration of Tears for Fears’ longtime six-member performance lineup. But there is also a socio-political slant that makes this 37-year old pop classic eerily relevant.

“The up and down side of songs like ‘Everybody Wants to Rule to the World’ is that they are as lyrically poignant today as they were when they were written. I say the down side because, unfortunately, the more things change, the more they stay the same. It’s not like the landscape has changed. If anything, it’s probably gotten worse since those songs were written. If I’m singing ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’ right now and you’re looking at Putin invading Ukraine, it takes on a different meaning. So it still remains relevant.

“Emotions don’t change that often. People don’t change that much.”

Luckily, another constant remains in Smith’s working relationship with Orzabel. While the two split for much of the 1990s, they reteamed in 2000. Their regenerated alliance resulted in the album predecessor to “The Tipping Point,” 2004’s curiously titled “Everybody Loves a Happy Ending.”

“The songs we play cover 2/3 of our lives,” Smith said. “We’ve been playing together since we were 13 (Smith and Orzabel are both now 60). That’s such a huge part of our lives. Our working relationship now is better than it’s been in a long time. I put that down to the fact that we made the wise decision to cut everyone else out of the process with our new music and sit down, just the two of us, to work out what we wanted to do. That brought us closer. We’ve worked this music out ourselves.”

Tears for Fears with Garbage

When: May 20, 7:30 p.m.

Where: Riverbend Music Center, 6295 Kellogg Ave. in Cincinnati

Tickets: $22.50-$249.50 through ticketmaster.com