I’ve
owned a few different copies of this album in the years since it was first released
– at least a couple on cassette, plus a couple on CD … and maybe even a copy on
vinyl before either of those formats. But I was still excited about picking up
the 30th anniversary deluxe edition on double disc a few weeks back. A personal
affirmation, of sorts, that The Hurting remains a stick-on everythingsgonegreen
Desert Island Disc.
Back
in 1983, the music of Tears For Fears was serious business. Even a year or so
before ‘Shout’ made it an even more serious business by taking the band beyond
the loving embrace of an intimate few and out into the arms of a wider global
populace. Long before the large scale success of the band’s second album, Songs
From The Big Chair, took Tears For Fears to the very brink of what might (or might
not) have been momentary world domination.
No,
it was serious business even before it was big business because of the grim themes
explored by Roland Orzabal, Curt Smith, Ian Stanley, and Manny Elias on The
Hurting. Orzabal and Smith had studied the work of American psychologist Arthur
Janov, whose ideas around “Primal Therapy” – a treatment which deals with
unresolved childhood pain – inform much of the album’s content.
To
some extent it’s a concept work, an album about childhood, an album about isolation,
loss, and abandonment. The album deals with these themes relentlessly. It’s a
dark, intense, brooding, heart-on-sleeve masterwork … and very serious
business.
Yet,
on a personal level it was, and is, a little bit more than that. More than the mere
fact that it was “emo” well before emo was so much as a twinkle in the beady
eye of the Great God of Teenage Angst.
For
me, The Hurting is more about the backdrop it provided for just about anything
and everything I did in late 1983, through early 1984. As a soundtrack to my
first time “playing house”, as a teenager consumed by the first flush of what I
thought was true love. Even today, I can’t listen to the album without that
context gently poking me in the ribs.
I
can recall a ‘Pale Shelter’ lyric sheet being meticulously removed from the
inner pages of a Smash Hits magazine before being pinned to the wall directly above
the “marital bed” … sure, I can laugh about it now, but at the time it was
deadly serious business.
So
The Hurting is all of that and more. It’s also probably one of the best debut
albums of its decade, and one of synthpop’s alltime finest. It’s immaculately
presented, with Chris Hughes and Ross Cullum co-producing. I suppose some of
the production does sound a bit dated in a 2013 context, but you know, I’m too
close to this album to offer any genuinely accurate assessment there – distance
being the mother of all objectivity. Or something.
The
deluxe package comes in a couple of different formats – I purchased the
two-disc set as opposed to the more comprehensive three-disc plus DVD Deluxe
release, but it still represents the album in expanded form. On CD 1 we get the
original album; ten tracks clocking in at just under 42 minutes. On CD 2 we get
single versions, b-sides, and demos.
And
just how many different versions of ‘Pale Shelter’ or ‘Change’ do we need? … there’s
four of each included among the 26 tracks found on the double disc edition.
More than enough. Not to mention a gut-wrenching five full versions of ‘Suffer
The Children’ (where’s the humanity?! – Ed) … The “super deluxe” package offers further material in the form of a third disc of BBC and Peel Sessions, plus some live stuff, and a DVD of the band performing live at the Hammersmith Odeon in December 1983. So far as deluxe releases go, this one is a pretty good one.
Yip
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