FEATURE:
Vinyl Corner
This Mortal Coil – It’ll End in Tears
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I wanted to feature…
This Mortal Coil’s first album, It’ll End in Tears, in Vinyl Corner. If you have not experienxed This Mortal Coil or know much about them, Wikipedia provide some more details:
“This Mortal Coil were a British music collective led by Ivo Watts-Russell, founder of the British record label 4AD.[2] Although Watts-Russell and John Fryer were the only two official members, the band's recorded output featured a large rotating cast of supporting artists, many of whom were otherwise associated with 4AD, including members of Cocteau Twins, Pixies, and Dead Can Dance”.
With Elizabeth Fraser on vocals, Robin Guthrie on guitar and Simon Raymonde on guitar, bass and synthesizer, there is so much to love about It’ll End in Tears. Released in October, 1984, the album consists of a mixture of original songs and cover versions – the rendition of Tim Buckley’s Song to the Siren is probably the album’s/group’s best-known song. If you can get it on vinyl, it provides a magnificent and rewarding listening experience. I say that about a lot of albums I cover on this feature. I mean it with It’ll End in Tears. This is what Rough Trade say in their description of the Deluxe Vinyl edition of the album:
“The first This Mortal Coil release from 1984 and what a classic. Summing up 4AD at that point, created by label head Ivo Watts-Russell and engineer John Fryer this soundtracked many a sun dappled bedsit deftly mixing soundscapes, original music and classic covers (Tim Buckley, Alex Chilton, Roy Harper, Rema Rema etc) but it's the guest musicians who make the album such a seminal slice of wonder - the hugely undervalued Gordon Sharp (Cindytalk), Dead Can Dance, Howard Devoto, Colourbox, Modern English and of course the Cocteau Twins with Elizabeth Fraser taking top honours with readings of Harper's Another Day and Buckley's Song to the Siren.
LP - Deluxe Vinyl which is different from the original release with the artwork reimagined by Ivo Watts-Russell and Vaughan Oliver (4AD’s long-time visual partner). Presented in a beautiful, hand finished and high-gloss gatefold sleeve. Remastered audio made from the original analogue studio tapes by the late, great John Dent”.
I am going to bring in a couple of reviews for a tremendous album. Before getting there, I want to bring in what TREBLE noted in 2018:
“This is music performed by people who’ve seen some shit, or are real good at faking it. That’s my description that most immediately comes to mind, yet that obviously doesn’t scratch the surface. Under the loose stewardship of 4AD label founder Ivo Watts-Russell, various artists from that massively influential imprint collaborated to turn tunes already expressing lament—by singer-songwriters at the fringes of popular appeal, like Buckley, Roy Harper and Big Star’s Alex Chilton—into some of the purest distillations of despair ever committed to tape. Chilton’s “Holocaust” finally becomes a horror worthy of its name, performed by Buzzcocks/Magazine frontman Howard Devoto like a man playing one last piano number in an apocalyptic rain-swept wasteland, bottle of whiskey and handgun at the ready for the only possible response to such suffering. Opening track “Kangaroo” is less dark but weirder, with a reverby bassline and forlorn major-key synth melody under the theatrical vocals of Scottish post-punk session man and eventual Cindytalk frontman Gordon Sharp. Its conjuring of the titular animal amid a tale of missed romantic connection lets you know exactly what strange place you entered the moment you pressed play.
In case it isn’t already abundantly clear, It’ll End in Tears is the essence of goth not because of volume, shock value or even its haunting cover photo (featuring model Pallas Citroen, as all releases by This Mortal Coil do). Only one song sounds like anything resembling traditional post-punk—naturally, it’s the band’s interpretation of Wire’s “Not Me,” and industrial accents only surface on the instrumental “FYT” and “The Last Ray.” Most of the music is low-key piano and synthesizer, arpeggiated clean guitar, extraordinarily expressive bass playing, basic drum machine programming and about 16 tons of dark atmosphere. The album simply radiates the feeling of slow emotional collapse. You can call the sound “dream pop,” as many have, but that phrase more accurately applies to Cocteau Twins and Julee Cruise or their many modern-indie disciples (ranging from Lykke Li and Lorde to the xx and Beach House) than it does This Mortal Coil. 4AD labelmates Dead Can Dance come close, but their music is guarded by its bombastic arrangements and frequent allusions to mysticism.
Speaking of which: As much praise as Fraser justly gets for “Siren” (and a string-accented cover of Roy Harper’s “Another Day”), Lisa Gerrard of Dead Can Dance deserves nearly as much praise for her two contributions to It’ll End in Tears. Both are original tracks, unlike a lot of the album, and they showcase a powerhouse artist at her peak: “Waves Become Wings” is a foreboding, drumless plea of longing driven by synthesizer and Gerrard’s multi-tracked voice, while “Dreams Made Flesh” features Gerrard playing yangqin (a Chinese dulcimer-esque instrument) at blazing speed and chanting like she’s desperate to repel—or perhaps summon—malevolent spirits. Neither song is dissimilar to work Gerrard did with Dead Can Dance, especially Spleen and Ideal and Within the Realm of a Dying Sun (talk about goth, amirite), but it’s beautiful to hear her knock these out of the park alone.
The album concludes with its most beautiful and perhaps most devastating song, “A Single Wish,” another original by Sharp, Cocteau Twins multi-instrumentalist Simon Raymonde and Colourbox’s Steven Young, the latter delivering a spirited piano performance. Its lyric is brief: nothing more than “You and I, alone here, you and I/It’ll end in tears,” and you realize sometimes feelings of loss, romantic or otherwise, don’t feel any more adorned than that naked, almost skin-stripped feeling. Specific lyrics aren’t particularly relevant when discussing This Mortal Coil and It’ll End in Tears anyway, because the project is more about an ineffable bleak mood than anything else.
It’s interesting to consider This Mortal Coil’s construction—a label getting everyone in the lab to throw their styles together and see what comes up. These can create supergroups as godawful as Damn Yankees or overrated as The Traveling Wilburys (fight me; that album is boring as shit). More recently, it’s led to rap-collective showcases: We Are Young Money, Rick Ross’s MMG compilations and, arguably most successfully, Kendrick Lamar and Black Hippy’s stewardship of the Black Panther soundtrack. Such a thing isn’t really sustainable when artists all return to their regular bands or gigs. This Mortal Coil released two more albums, Filigree & Shadow and Blood, both of which are well worth your time if more uneven than their predecessor. But five years passed between the second and third, and 4AD as a label would eventually move beyond the ethereal goth stereotype it’d picked up and embrace a truly diverse stable of artists across multiple genres. Chaos is inherently unsustainable, and despite approaching it in an oft-nuanced way, This Mortal Coil is all about chaos. It is sui generis beautiful pain, and no one can (or probably should) produce something this intense day in and day out. But remastered reissues of all three albums (along with an odds-and-sods release, Dust and Guitars) ensure that a new generation of listeners will come to It’ll End in Tears when they’re ready for it. Here it is. Let it enfold you”.
I am not overly-versed in the work of This Mortal Coil. Their three studio albums are essential listens. I particularly love and respect It’ll End in Tears. The first all-out review that I will source from is from AllMusic. They are among many who have hugely praised one of the best albums of the 1980s:
“The first of 4AD owner Ivo Watts-Russell's multi-artist studio sessions under the This Mortal Coil name, 1984's It'll End in Tears was a surprisingly influential album in many circles, key in the reawakening of interest in artists like Alex Chilton and the late Tim Buckley by a younger generation of listeners. (Two songs from Big Star's Third are included, a version of "Kangaroo" featuring Cindytalk vocalist Gordon Sharp that sounds even druggier and more disorienting than the original, and a chilling piano and strings version of "Holocaust" with haunted vocals by Howard Devoto; the simple but ravishing version of Buckley's "Song to the Siren" by Cocteau Twins Liz Fraser and Robin Guthrie was cited by David Lynch as the direct inspiration for Julee Cruise's first two albums and has since been used several times in commercials and films.) The covers are the most memorable part of the album -- a Robbie Grey-sung version of Colin Newman's "Not Me," cleverly incorporating a hypnotic riff from another Newman song, "B," is the most conventionally hooky song on the album, to the point that folks who haven't listened to the album for a while tend to forget that half of the songs are "band" originals. These six songs mark 4AD's definitive break from its origins as an artsy post-punk imprint (Bauhaus, Modern English's first few records, etc.) to the development of "the 4AD sound," a heavily reverbed wash of treated guitars and atmospheric keyboards with vocals treated as another instrument in an amorphous wash of sound. The problem is that these largely instrumental tracks sound more like half-baked studio doodles than fully formed songs; a three-song stretch on side two featuring Dead Can Dance's Lisa Gerrard is particularly tiresome. As a whole, It'll End in Tears is a lovely, often exquisite record; taken individually, the power of some of the songs is lost”.
I think that It’ll End in Tears is a glorious Dream Pop album that anyone can enjoy! Go and seek it out if you have not listened before. I guarantee you will get something from it. In their review, this is what Sputnikmusic had to say:
“After Song to the Siren, Tears unleashes a more subtle and challenging set of covers, which (with the exception of Collin Newman’s Not Me) dominate the rest of the record. Holocaust stays within the original piano melody of Big Star’s original. But this time the song starts off surrounded in tense and droning strings. There is something not quite right, and in a good way, slivering beneath the surface. Vocalist Howard Devoto comes off sounding like a weepy Brian Eno circa Here Come The Warm Jets. Yet somehow his often nervous and at times off key delivery is perfect for the songs sickly melody. Holocausts cryptic yet obviously depressing message is cemented in the songs shivering final lines “you’re a wasted face, a sad eyed lie, you’re a holocaust”.
Both Kanga-Roo and Holocaust originate from Big Stars final album “Third” the masterpiece of their small, but influential discography. Third is also the groups most ragged and distressed recording, highlighting the groups disbandment. This Mortal Coil should be given credit here for establishing structure to the originals purposely broken arrangements, which Chilton used to destroy his own groups claim to fame and fortune. As mentioned before, the super group make their versions of the songs their own whilst staying in touch with the tearful emotions of the originals.
The next two songs are relatively similar in tone. Both are much more intimate than the previous set of covers. Lyrically, Fond Affections and Another Day are also the highlights of the album. Combining just enough metaphors with straightforward confessions, these songs are both easier to relate to and resonate with thoughtfulness. Sung by an almost feminine Gordon Sharp making a reappearance, Fond Affections is almost an A cappella. What refuses it the title is a strange whipping noise which resonates through the songs complete running length. A strange yet compelling choice of instrumentation. Another Day once again starring the excellent Elizabeth Fraser on vocals updates Roy Harpers arrangement by adding a fuller string section and abandoning the originals guitar chord structure.
At this point in time it should be advised for me to tell you about the groups own material. Yes, despite This Mortal Coil being known as a covers band for the most part, half of It’ll End in Tears contains the groups own copyrighted material. These tracks are all instrumentals to an extent. Composed mostly by Watts and Fryer with them applying their usual studio trickery. Sadly most of these instrumentals become the albums weak spots. With the exception of The Last Ray, Dreams Made Flesh and A Single Wish, which features vocals from Gordon Sharp, the group would have to wait till their sophomore effort “Filigree and Shadow” to gain a better footing with instrumental sequencing. And it's sequencing which damages the albums third act. Because the group suddenly puts greater emphasis on their own inconsistent material (written here by the usually much better Lisa Gerrard) , it suddenly means the listener has to hold their breath to get to Dreams Made Flesh and the excellent Newman cover, Not Me.
This is not to say the weaker instrumentals are terrible. If you have the patience to look upon them as ambiance they do their job fine enough, but they are ultimately put to use as filler. Waves Become Wings and Barramundi occupy 8 minutes of the albums middle end. Once the waiting is over the final two songs fortunately redeem the albums brief stumble. Robby Grey's vocal cover of Not Me is easily the most instant and freewheeling of the set. It feels like pure sunlight as the band smartly incorporate a ringing melody from another Newman song, B. Robbie Grey sings here and sounds like he’s having a better time than everyone else despite Newman’s cynical lyrics. Whilst Not Me is the albums only outdated track in terms of production, it is ultimately redeemed by its refreshing pace and B’s melody. A Single Wish finally concludes the album as an epitaph. Gordon Sharp makes his final appearance delivering unintelligible lyrics except from his final line “It’ll all end in tears” echoing the name of the albums title. As the music blissfully fades out, one is left with a sense of poignancy and nostalgia.
These moods sum up the albums thematic qualities and its strengths perfectly. Though imperfect, It’ll End in Tears is an undoubtedly powerful recording, even if it at times feels less rousing with many of its songs taken individually. If you are a fan of any of the bands and artists mentioned above this may be a mandatory release. At least do yourself a favor and look this up, you will be pleasantly surprised about this relatively unknown but talented super group”.
I will end it there. I have not really covered This Mortal Coil in my features before. I thought it was high time that I spotlighted their incredible debut release. It’ll End in Tears is an album that you are sure to love and appreciate. For those who are new to its wonders, go and get a copy…
WHEN you can.