Tears For Fears – Songs From The Big Chair

I bought this as a replacement for my OG US pressing, which has developed a skip toward the end of Mothers Talk, hoping that the people that posted bad reviews were just being snobby. I’m sorry to confirm that they are one hundred percent correct… This pressing completely lifeless. The bass is practically nonexistent. Not even tone controls can save it. :(

Have the original UK CD when first released but wanted the Original vinyl as well but was unable to get it at the time. Bought this reissue from HMV in the UK. It doesn't sound any better than my CD and the strange thing is it doesn't have anything in the runout grooves at all, nothing! It also has a really bad edit between 'I believe ' and 'Broken' which is not on my original CD. Does this mean it's just a straight rip to vinyl from the CD no mastering or editing. Anybody any ideas?

The music is great and had so much memories for me. The record quality of this pressing is ok. But it has audible surface noise.

Majority of the record is dead quiet but I do have a few qualms with this release I would say. There is a really loud pop at the beginning of Everybody Wants to Rule the World which bugs me, as well as a repeating pop for a few seconds near the beginning of Listen. Not sure if other copies of this version are like that but I guess I can live with it. It's just a few pops on a couple tracks (really great tracks but what track off this album isn’t great?). I don't have any other versions of this album to compare it to since this is my first and only copy, as with most of my albums, but part of me feels like these songs are a bit more compressed than other versions might be. At least compared to how other versions might sound. Could just be my ears fooling me tho. Still sounds pretty good, just not as open and dynamic as I'd like it to as somebody who loves this album a lot. The real kicker here tho (and what made me start to contemplate and question the true quality and validity of this release in the first place) is that the transition between I Believe and Broken cuts out for a moment, like at the end of I Believe as it's dying down, it cuts out, and then the beginning of Broken starts with it cutting back to the last little bit of I Believe when it shouldn't have cut out in the first place, which leads me to believe that this might not even be an official version. Or at least no official version of any record should ever have an issue like that or be sourced from mp3's or CD's or anything of the sort. Otherwise I would've just bought a CD. Although it does sound pretty good on my setup, and aside from the loud pop at the beginning of Everybody Wants to Rule the World, the repeating pop near the beginning of Listen and the weird thing with the transition between those two songs, everything else sounds fine. The really weird thing tho is that despite the weird issue with the transition between I Believe and Broken, the transitions between subsequent tracks, particularly Head Over Heels (the little bit of Broken at the end) and Listen, are completely seamless. As I’m writing this review however upon further listens it sounds like I Believe already completely fades out by the time Broken even starts, it just also starts with a snippet of the end of I Believe…? Which makes it even weirder. And the fact that as far as I know I Believe isn't even supposed to completely fade out at all and is supposed to just lead directly into Broken as the song dies down. So yea, I don’t even know what the hell is going on there. Doesn’t disrupt the flow of the album too much but definitely a strange oddity. A giant rabbit hole of why is this pressing the way it is when they could’ve just kept the seamless transition between the two tracks that I can only assume, as somebody who only owns this copy, is present on all other versions of this album on vinyl as I've always heard it everywhere else. I suppose I'm still happy to finally have this on vinyl despite its minor defects. But who knows, somebody in the future might fight out it's not an official version, and in that case not only would I not be surprised but hopefully they also update this version to say so. Definitely would recommend people try to go after other copies of this album, since they most likely sound a bit better and don't have pops or that weird transition. I'll just have to settle with this one for now I guess. Just had to vent my frustrations and make people aware that this isn't necessarily the all time best pressing. Thankfully slightly subpar pressings don't ruin truly great albums :)