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It'll End in Tears
1984 debut album by This Mortal Coil From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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It'll End in Tears is the first album released by the 4AD multi-artist studio[a] project This Mortal Coil, a loose grouping of artists brought together by label boss Ivo Watts-Russell, released on 8 October 1984. The album features many of the artists on the label's roster, including Elizabeth Fraser and Simon Raymonde of the Cocteau Twins, Gordon/Cindy Sharpe of Cindytalk,[b] Martyn Young of Colourbox and Lisa Gerrard of Dead Can Dance. While side one is mostly covers selected by Watts-Russell, side two contains original tracks largely composed by Raymonde and Gerrard.
The album contains two songs from Big Star's 1978 album Third/Sister Lovers; album opener "Kangaroo" sung by Sharp, and "Holocaust" sung by Howard Devoto. Fraser provides vocals for the covers of Tim Buckley's "Song to the Siren" and Roy Harper's "Another Day". The former was released as TMC's debut single a year before the album and became an unexpected hit on the UK independent charts. Sharp sings on two further tracks: Rema-Rema's "Fond Affections" and the TMC original "A Single Wish", which closes the album.
This Mortal Coil recorded two further albums: Filigree & Shadow (1986) and Blood (1991), although both were highly praised, neither gained the same critical acclaim or cult status.
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Conception
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This Mortal Coil began as a one-off single in 1983 when the 4AD record label founder Ivo Watts-Russell asked the band Modern English to re-record "Sixteen Days / Gathering Dust". The track is a melody of their earlier songs "Sixteen Days" and "Gathering Dust", sung by Elizabeth Fraser of the fellow 4AD band Cocteau Twins.[5] Almost as an afterthought, Watts-Russell asked Fraser and Cocteau Twins guitarist's Robin Guthrie to record cover version of Tim Buckley's "Song to the Siren" as the single's B-side. After the cover became an instant critical success, it became the A-side, and spent two years on the UK independent chart and by 2011 had sold over half a million copies.[6]
Watts-Russell intended the follow-up album as a collection of cover versions of his favourite songs performed by artists on his label. To help with engineering and production he enlisted the long-term 4AD producer John Fryer.[7]
Simon Raymonde of the Cocteau Twins took on a far larger and more important role than was initially planned. Raymonde somewhat modestly wrote in his 2024 biography that he was just a "gun for hire...playing under direction". However, he was neither paid a flat fee nor given a royalty percentage for his work.[8] However, across the three This Mortal Coil, he played on twelve different including several of his own compositions.[9]
This Mortal Coil never played together live, although the Cocteau Twins did perform "Song to the Siren" several times in the mid-1980s.
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Recording
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It'll End in Tears was recorded in 1984 at Eric Radcliffe's Blackwing Studios in Waterloo, south-east London. Blackwing is located inside a deconsecrated building that was formerly All Hallows Church, and is best known for recording many of the early 1980s Mute Records bands such as Depeche Mode and Yazoo.[c] The location was chosen in part because Fryer had worked there on Depeche Mode's 1981 debut album Speak & Spell, and as a non-musician Watts-Russell was depending on the producer to realise his abstract ideas into actual music.[10]
When called into the studio, the musicians were typically unaware of what tracks they would be interpreting and were given vague instructions. Raymonde recalls arriving on his first day and being asked to listen to Big Star's 1974 song "Kangaroo" and provide a "minimalist take" with the bass guitar as the main instrument. Similarly with "The Last Wish", Raymonde was given a simple drum pattern and asked to come up with a bass line within around half an hour. When he did so, Watts-Russell said it sounded good and "let's record it". Soon after Guthrie entered the studio, according to Raymonde, "for an hour or so", and recorded his guitar part. However, after the early parts were laid down, the musicians were allowed to add additional layering and instrumentation.[10]
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Music and lyrics
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Side one
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The album opens with "Kangaroo", the first of two covers from Big Star's third album Sister Lovers (recorded in 1974, released in 1978). In a press release for the 4AD album, Watts-Russell spoke of his admiration for Big Star's singer and songwriter Alex Chilton, who by the early 1980s was little known and recovering from alcohol and drug addiction. The success of the 4AD project renewed interest in Chilton's music.[11] The track was a long-term favourite of Watts-Russell's, who described it as "a cross between the Velvet Underground and Syd Barrett on heroin".[12] The track was sung by Cinder Sharp of Cindytalk and arranged by Raymonde, who stripped its melody down to a dominant and strummed[citation needed] bass line.[13]
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"Song to the Siren" is by far the album's best-known track.[14] It is sung by Cocteau Twins vocalist Elizabeth Fraser and arranged by their lead guitarist and songwriter Robin Guthrie. The original is sung from the point of view of a sailor encountering sirens from Homer's Odyssey, Fraser's vocals seem to reverse the roles in that she becomes one of the sirens.[6]
The Cocteau Twins eventually became unhappy with the track's success, particularly because they were paid a flat rate for the recording, and Guthrie believed he was not given enough credit for his accompanying guitar. As the band became more commercially successful through the 1980s and Guthrie and Ivo grew apart, the Cocteau Twins began to resent the money the label was earning from the song. [14] "Song to the Siren"'s popularity led to other tension within the band when Guthrie and Fraser worried that Raymonde was dedicating too much of his time to the later This Mortal Coil records.[citation needed]
"Fond Affections" is a cover of a 1980 song by the short-lived 4AD band Rema-Rema, written by Marco Pirroni (formerly of Adam and the Ants) and Gary Asquith. The theatrical original is very different to the subdued TMC cover, which is sung by Fraser to a sparse arrangement by Raymonde.[15]
Side two
Side two opens with a cover of Roy Harper's nostalgic 1970 song "Another Day", and is also sung by Fraser. The original was described by the critic Peter Beaumont as a "story of a recollected affair in the domestic setting of his past lover's home...prefiguring the idea that whatever happens the time for second chances has long past; that there can be no magic in this encounter."[16] Guthrie was against the song's inclusion as he viewed it as hippie Progressive rock sung by a "bearded old man".[citation needed] While the cover led to renewed interest in Harper's career, the critical consensus is that Fraser's vocals elevated the original, an assessment that Harper agrees with.[11] During this period Fraser was transitioning from her early Goth vocal style to the emotive and expansive vocals for which she is best known, and so was experimenting. Watts-Russell claims to have considered editing out some of what he described as "Kate Bush-isms" from the final track.[11]
The tracks "Waves Become Wings" and "Dreams Made Flesh" were written and sung by Lisa Gerrard of Dead Can Dance. Watts-Russell had intended for her to provide vocals for a cover, but she disliked the idea and asked if she and fellow band member Brendan Perry could write original tracks.[17] Although Watts-Russell initially sought that the album would consist of cover versions only, he was impressed by their recording, which was eventually split into the songs "Waves Become Wings" and "Dreams Made Flesh".[18] The instrumental "Barramundi" separates Gerrard's two tracks; composed and arranged by Raymonde, it consists of his guitar parts overlayed with a Yamaha DX7 synthesiser.[19] The music for Gerrard's second track, "Dreams Made Flesh", is dominated by her yangqin (a Chinese hammered dulcimer), with rhythm parts played on a bass drum by Perry.[17][18]
"Not Me" is a cover of a solo track by Colin Newman of the influential and minimalist post-punk band Wire, from his 1980 album A–Z. It is sung by Robbie Grey of Modern English.[17][20] The album closes with "A Single Wish", formed around a piano figure by Steven Young of Colourbox, with additional instrumentation and arrangement by Raymonde. Sharp provided the lyrics and vocals, which follow a lengthy instrumental introduction.[19] The cello sound was achieved by Raymonde's use of a Gizmotron, a mechanical effects device that emulates bowing and has a rapid natural attack. Because the Gizmotron is a particularly challenging device to control, the recording proved to be very difficult.[21]
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Cover art
The cover art was designed by Vaughan Oliver and based on a photograph by Nigel Grierson; both were by then long-time member of 4AD's in-house design team 23 Envelope.[22][23] The black and white and out-of-focus photograph shows the visual artist Yvette (also known as "Pallas Citroen").[24][3] Grierson describes the image as an attempt to "create an intriguing image, influenced by both the subconscious, and scenes from David Lynch's Eraserhead and Luis Buñuel's Los Olvidados—eyes closed, hair pulled back."[25]
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Reception
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It'll End in Tears was met with universal acclaim on release. Since then, Fryer's production has often been praised, and was described in 2011 by the critic Net Raggett as "maintain a mood of poised, shadowy romanticism, part dark ambient grind and part late-night string-laden recital".[3] In 2018, Pitchfork ranked the album as number eight on its list of "The 30 Best Dream Pop Albums".[1]
Writing for The Guardian in 2006, the critic Dorian Lynskey listed the TMC version of "Song to the Siren" as number 7 in their list of "Covers that are better than the original songs". He concluded that "by turning..[Buckley's song]...into a tremulous ambient hymn...the original version seems like a mere sketch."[28]
A 2018 review by Classic Pop described the album as "swathed in lush, gothic-romantic swirls of echo and reverb".[29] The review describes Devoto's vocals as "like a hollow, haunted phantom" and praises both Sharp (on "Kangaroo") and Gerrard's vocals as "ghostly", before concluding that Fraser's contribution on "Song to the Siren" was the standout performance.[29] While acknowledging Fraser's contributions, several critics have praised Sharp's vocals which, according to Raggett extend "from operatic bravura on..."Kanga Roo" to the closing tenderness of "A Single Wish."[3]
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Influence
The album's atmospheric and melancholic sound has been hugely influential, and is cited by numerous bands and artists, including Anohni and the Johnsons, Bat for Lashes, Perfume Genius and Amen Dunes as influencing their own music.[30][7] Both Anohni and Beach House have cited "Song to the Siren" as specifically important, and many other artists and bands have adapted This Mortal Coil's cover versions—described by the critic Sean O'Neal as "covers of covers".[7]
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Track listing
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Personnel
- Ivo Watts-Russell – conception, production
- John Fryer – production
- Simon Raymonde – production, arrangements, guitar, bass, synthesizer
- Elizabeth Fraser – vocals
- Gordon Sharp – vocals
- Lisa Gerrard – vocals, yangqin
- Robbie Grey – vocals
- Howard Devoto – vocals
- Robin Guthrie – guitar
- Brendan Perry – bass drone[20]
- Martyn Young – synthesizer, bass, guitar
- Mark Cox – synthesizer
- Steven Young – piano
- Manuela Rickers – guitar
- Martin McCarrick – cello
- Gini Ball – violin, viola[31]
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Charts
Singles
- "Song to the Siren" – #66 UK Singles Chart (3 weeks), #3 UK Indie Chart (101 weeks), #8 NZ (15 weeks), #39 NL (4 weeks); released September 1983. "Song to the Siren"'s 101 weeks on the UK Indie Chart was the 4th longest chart run.[citation needed]
- "Kangaroo" – #2 UK Indie Chart (20 weeks); released August 1984.[citation needed]
Notes
- This Mortal Coil never played live, although individual artists did incorporate songs into their own live performances.[3]
- The transgender artist Sharp is credited as Gordon on the album notes but is latterly known as Cindy Sharp or Cinder.[4]
- Both the Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance's debut albums, Garlands (1982) and Dead Can Dance (1984) were recorded at Blackwing.
Citations
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