Tears for Fears: Tears Roll Down (Greatest Hits 82-92) (1992)

While most students of Britain's techno-pop school programmed their synthesizers to play boppy dance tunes, Tears for Fears spent the '80s in a more serious music lab, concocting obsessively intricate rock. V-e-r-y slowly. With only three albums to show for 10 years of work, Tears for Fears still managed to sell millions of records to a vast audience that valued sophisticated studio craft and intelligent lyrics on subjects as provocative as primal-scream therapy. But that was then. Besides acknowledging that the group's name is now merely the trademark for Roland Orzabal's solo career (he and Curt Smith have parted ways), Tears Roll Down — nearly half of Tears for Fears' entire album output (including ''Shout,'' ''Mad World,'' and ''Sowing the Seeds of Love''), plus the unexceptional new ''Laid So Low (Tears Roll Down)'' — seems like nothing but a crass maneuver to sell fans music they already own. C+