Elemental is the fourth studio album by English pop rock band Tears for Fears, released on 7 June 1993 by Mercury Records. It was the band's first album recorded following the departure of co-founder Curt Smith, with Roland Orzabal assuming sole leadership with the help of additional musicians.
The album peaked at No. 5 in the UK and No. 45 in the US; it also reached the top 10 in France and Italy, the top 20 in Canada and the top 30 in several European countries. It has been certified Silver in the UK, and Gold in the US, Canada and France. The single "Break It Down Again" was a hit across Europe and North America, and was the band's last single to reach the US top 40.
Elemental was the last album that Tears for Fears released under the Phonogram/Mercury label, the company to which the band had been signed since 1981.
Production
Elemental was the first new Tears for Fears album in four years, following 1989's The Seeds of Love. However, despite being released under the Tears for Fears moniker, it is essentially a solo effort by Roland Orzabal, as Curt Smith had left the band in 1991. Regarding the split with Smith, Orzabal stated in 1993,
Orzabal publicly downplayed Tears for Fears' loss of Curt Smith, stating, "The relationship I had with Curt was like that of a producer to an artist... I'd help him get his vocals right and even write his songs for him. It wasn't really a shared thing." Smith released his first solo album, Soul on Board, on 23 August 1993, over two months after the release of Elemental.
For much of the writing and recording of Elemental, Orzabal was assisted by musician Alan Griffiths (1959–2017), a longtime acquaintance who had collaborated with Tears for Fears before. In 1978, Griffiths became a founding member of the Bristol band Apartment, which became the new wave music band The Escape in 1981. In early 1983, The Escape signed with Phonogram Records, making the band label-mates with Tears for Fears. In late 1983, The Escape was Tears for Fears' support act; the band broke up in late 1984 and Griffiths and Escape bandmate Nicky Holland became session musicians for Tears for Fears' 1985 world tour. Holland played keyboards on Tears for Fears' The Seeds of Love, co-writing the majority of that album's songs, and her former bandmate Griffiths took on a similar songwriting role for the first Tears for Fears album sans Curt Smith. Orzabal later recalled, "When I split up with Curt, I wrote with Alan Griffiths and we were extremely prolific. We'd come up with a song virtually every day. Al was a bit of a genius, able to make musical sketches that were easy to jump off and finish into a song. That was an amazing period, and it's tougher to write with people you don't know yet."
Elemental was recorded at Orzabal's newly built home studio, Neptune's Kitchen, and was co-produced by Orzabal, Griffiths and Tim Palmer. Palmer's recent credits at the time included co-producing David Bowie's first Tin Machine album (1989's Tin Machine) and mixing Pearl Jam's debut album Ten (1991). Orzabal stated, "I'm kind of used to working autonomously... I would say that this album is less of a solo album than Seeds of Love, in fact. The team I worked with was amazing—Tim Palmer the co-producer, and Alan Griffiths, who co-wrote the stuff." Parts of the album have a more alternative rock sound than on previous Tears for Fears albums; this sound would be explored further in the next Tears for Fears album, Raoul and the Kings of Spain (1995), which Orzabal also recorded with Griffiths and Palmer. (Griffiths would also collaborate with Orzabal on the latter's first and only official solo album, Tomcats Screaming Outside [2001].)
Interviewed twenty years after the release of Elemental, Palmer recalled, "In the 80's, [Tears for Fears] had a reputation for spending a lot of time making records, but that's just the way they are. I tried to speed things up and got the record done in six months—not much of an achievement, but it was fast for them." Orzabal had a recording studio built at his home to record the album, stating, "It's an old photographer's studio that we converted. It was called Neptune's Kitchen, and we used a lot of copper that was doused in acid to look like it's been underwater and all the colors are sort of greens and blues like the sea. And there's a weathervane on top of the building which is a whale... It was necessary, economically, to work at home because I spend so long in the studios on albums that the bills mount up, and doing it at home was a sensible move."
Tim Palmer recalled,