I first heard the beguiling voice of Liz Fraser when Robert Plant used a recording of This Mortal Coil's "Song to the Siren" as his intro music on his tour stop at the Nassau Coliseum in the late spring of 1985, its lulling mellifluousness melding seamlessly with the opening notes of his opening number, "In the Mood." It left an impression.
I didn't hear it again until a few months later during my freshman year of college, on a mixtape my friend Charlie sent me from a semester in England. The only trouble was that Charlie misidentified the track as being by the Cocteau Twins, which prompted me to rush out and pick up a copy of The Pink Opaque by the Cocteaus ... which, while a truly delightful album, does not contain "Song to the Siren."
Some time after that, a widely neglected copy of This Mortal Coil's It'll End in Tears landed at WDUB, the college radio station from whence I unsolicitedly played music, in the dead of night, to a largely disinterested campus otherwise besotted with the Grateful Dead, Little Feat and the Allman Brothers. As such, I *may* have liberated that copy of It'll End in Tears - which does indeed contain "Song to the Siren" -- from the station's porous archive after a late shift, never to return it (guilty as charged, your honor).
Regardless, to my ears, it's one of the single greatest recordings ever, and it's Liz Fraser's birthday, so go celebrate ethereally.
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