I’d never lived through a summer quite that humid.  Even the two summers I’d spent in Fairfax, Virginia, seemed tame compared to that summer in Bloomington, Indiana.  I was over at a friend’s house—sans air conditioning—and we were lazily talking as sweat dripped off us.  She popped in a new CD, and I was immediately mesmerized by it, forgetting all of those pesky atmospheric woes.  I knew the voice immediately, as I’d always been rather obsessed with the singer and the song writer, but I’d had no idea that the band had recorded a new album.  The last one had been really good, but I’d not been blown away by it, at least not to the extent that the first two had captivated me.  But, after just a minute or so of listening to the new album in the summer of 1993, I grabbed the booklet of ELEMENTAL and pored over the lyrics and the liner notes.

I’d known that Curt Smith had left the band, but I knew nothing about Alan Griffiths or Tim Palmer.  Their names were all over the notes, almost as prominent as Roland Orzabal’s.

Continue reading “23 Years Later: ELEMENTAL by TEARS FOR FEARS” →