I had to be in the office at 6:00 am this morning. As such, I left my apartment around 4:55, eschewing the taxi option in favor of clearing my head via walking the forty-someodd blocks. Still steeped in the thick shadow of night, Manhattan is a very different place at 5:00 am. Zipping through the selections on my newly repaired iPod, I toggled up an album that seemed tailor made for my vaguely somnambulistic stroll through the whisper quiet streets of a slumbering city. I've loved this record from the moment I first heard it and have cherished its gentle splendor ever since, prompting me to unearth the following entry I originally posted on the ILM boards back in the Summer of 2003, since expanded with lots of needlessly fancy adjectives.
Like most of the albums I choose to single out in this fashion, I'd say It'll End in Tears retains a sound singularly all its own. To listen to it is to immerse yourself in its languid realm.
I'm an avid fan of This Mortal Coil, the pet project of Ivo Watts-Russell, founder of the lauded British indie label, 4AD. Assembling a collective of musicians from his label's roster, Watts-Russell has, over three albums and the odd single, created a distinctive body of work renowned for its atmospheric melancholy and haunting ambience a good decade before the rise of the similarly inclined, so-called "Trip Hop." Comprised of lush instrumental passages and covers of some of Watts-Russell's favorite songs, This Mortal Coil's music is well worth seeking out.
But of the three albums, I'd say it's the first one, It'll End in Tears that especially distinguishes itself. I first heard the album's single, an ethereal rendition of Tim Buckley's "Song to the Siren," as the then-seemingly incongruous intro music to a mid-80's arena stop by ex-Led Zeppelin frontman, Robert Plant. As the final twirling trill from this mystery vocalist's mouth segued seamlessly into the slow build of Plant's opening number, "In the Mood" (an otherwise mediocre number I've since grown to appreciate strictly out of association), I remember being especially struck by its vespertine tone and the warmly sumptuous voice; a voice I'd later learn to belong to erstwhile Cocteau Twin vocalist, Liz Fraser.
But, at the time, I didn't know who sang it and, somewhat despairingly, didn't expect to ever hear it again. A few months later, a friend of mine named Charlie, who'd been spending a semester abroad in England, sent a package to me at Denison University containing a mixtape. In between packs of shout-along, two-chord blitzes by bands like the Meteors and Peter & The Test Tube Babies, Charlie had awkwardly crammed that song, albeit wrongly credited -- as it turned out -- to the Cocteau Twins, and without the inclusion of a title. Ecstatic to have finally come across it again, I raced to the nearest record store to my school (that being Threshold Audio, a ramshackle record shop tucked behind a dilapidated mall in the far flung expanse of grey, sunless Newark, Ohio). I ended up wrongly picking up The Pink Opaque, a collection of Cocteau Twins singles compiled for an otherwise indifferent American audience. While it was a richly compelling and refreshingly bold departure from my normal tastes (at the time, a steady diet of Black Flag, Alien Sex Fiend and Chicago punk band, Naked Raygun), it did not, in fact, contain that song for which I'd been searching.
I eventually clued myself in via an article in SPIN, which cleared up the misconception (while Liz Fraser and guitarist Robin Guthrie of the Cocteau Twins do indeed perform the song, it had been, in fact, released under the name, This Mortal Coil). One more trip to Threshold later, and It'll End in Tears was finally mine.
It may have been a long search, but oh was it worth it. Immersed in sepia-toned thaumaturgy, these songs drift seamlessly in and out of the speakers (with one ham-fisted exception,...see below) in the closest approximation of a "dream state" as has been captured in a recording studio. Even beyond the sublime "Song to the Siren," the album held some unique gems. Flanking Fraser came Dead Can Dance's vocalist Lisa Gerrard, Cindytalk's Gordon Sharp and ex-Buzzcock/Magazine vocalist Howard Devoto, each offering hushed, fragile performances. Subtle strings, gingerly plucked guitars and hammered dulcimers cut through the mist, creating the sonic equivalent of wandering across a foggy, North Scottish beach in the humid thickness of summer. Listening to the lovingly woven progression from "Waves Become Wings" into "Barramundi" and gradually into "Dreams Made Flesh" is to verily breach the higher reaches of the velveteen skies and caress the pulchritudinous undercarriage of heaven.....or something. It's an album that lends itself to ridiculously florid hyperbole. Friends and I would sit in my dorm room cracking open beer after beer listening to this record meliflously spread its gossamer wings and glide out of my speakers like some shimmering, translucent heron.
Unlike so many records of its day, It'll End in Tears actually took the listener someplace. It all plummets, however, like a once-majestic, punctured dirigible, deflating upon the clumsy opening chords of "Not Me." The album's one flaw, "Not Me" features luckless Modern English mewler Robbie Grey (flanked by some Cocteaus and one Xmal Deutschlander) parping out an anaemic dollop of whiney guitar pop that sticks out of the proceedings like an unsolicited erection during an otherwise beatific wedding celebration.
This one bit of ill-timed flotsam notwithstanding, It'll End in Tears remains for me one of the most stirring collections of music to be found. Is it precious and histrionic? Surely. Does it border dangerously on the forbidding frontiers of "New Age" music? Admittedly, yes. Has "Song to the Siren" basically become a swoony would-be prom song for doe-eyed goth wallflowers? Regrettably, yes. Regardless, It'll End in Tears is still a gorgeous piece of work.
A number of years later, 4AD released 1983-1991, a box set containing all three This Mortal Coil albums plus a clutch of some of the songs they'd covered as peformed by the original artists. It was courtesy of this package that I finally layed ears on the original version of "Song to the Siren" as penned and crooned by doomed folkie troubadour, Tim Buckley (father of equally doomed rock troubadour and poor swimmer, Jeff Buckley). As moving as the song is (and would be in anyone's hands) and as accomplished a voice as Buckley boasted, his version sounded like a constipated bull walrus finally purging its long-suffering bowels in comparison to the exquisite rendering by This Mortal Coil. A rare feat indeed.
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