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. It was released on 8 October 1984 and 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 and sold well, neither gained the same critical acclaim or cult status.
Conception
This Mortal Coil began for 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", and was sung by Elizabeth Fraser of the fellow 4AD band Cocteau Twins.[6][7] Almost as an afterthought, Watts-Russell asked Fraser and Cocteau Twins guitarist's Robin Guthrie to record a 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.[8]
In an interview that year, Fraser said that "apart from the Tim Buckley song, the whole idea doesn't really work. We were asked to contribute to it but we never thought about it seriously — never imagined it would come out at all. We were never in the studio together or anything. We all just did separate tracks at different times. Even the Buckley song, I'm not really pleased with my vocals. I really like the song itself...I thought the words were beautiful."[7]
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.[9]
This Mortal Coil never played together live,[10] although the Cocteau Twins did play "Song to the Siren" several times in the mid-1980s, and Brendan Perry of Dead Can Dance frequently incorporates the song into his solo performances.[11]
Recording
Simon Raymonde in 1986
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.[12]
Simon Raymonde of the Cocteau Twins took on a far larger role than was initially planned. Raymonde somewhat modestly wrote in his 2024 biography that he was just a "gun for hire...playing under direction" given that he was not paid either the usual flat fee or a royalty percentage.[13] Across the three This Mortal Coil albums, Raymonde played on twelve separate tracks, including on several of his own compositions.[14]
Having agreed to contribute, the musicians were typically unaware of what tracks they would be asked to interpret. Even after Watts-Russel gave only vague instructions. Raymonde recalls that on his first day he was told to listen to Big Star's 1974 song "Kangaroo" and provide a "minimalist take" with the bass guitar as the main instrument. Similarly, before the recording of "The Last Wish", Raymonde was given a simple drum pattern and asked to come up with a bass line within the next half-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.[12]
Music and lyrics
Side one
Gordon Sharp (aka Cindy Sharp or Cinder) performing in 2009. Sharp sings "Kangaroo", "Fond Affections" and "A Single Wish".
"It'll End in Tears" opens with "Kangaroo", the first of two covers from Big Star's album Third/Sister Lovers, which was recorded in 1974 and but not released until 1978. In a press release for the 4AD album, Watts-Russell spoke of his admiration for Big Star's singer and songwriter Alex Chilton, whose music career was largely forgotten by the early 1980s.[15] The track was a long-term favourite of Watts-Russell's: he described it as "a cross between the Velvet Underground and Syd Barrett on heroin".[16] The track was sung by Cinder Sharp of Cindytalk and arranged by Raymonde, who stripped its music down to a dominant bass-line strummed on an eight-string Ibanez Musician bass guitar. The bass is accompanied by a flute should played by Raymonde on a Yamaha DX7, as well as cello parts added by Martin McCarrick of Siouxsie and the Banshees.[12][17]
The cover of Tim Buckley and Larry Beckett's "Song to the Siren" is by far the album's best-known track.[18][10] It is sung by Fraser and with sparse guitar parts added by Guthrie. The song's eerie and affecting lyrics contain what Aston describes as "images of the sea, doomed romance and drowning", described by Watts-Russell as alluding to "the inevitable damage that love causes".[8] The original is from the point of view of a sailor encountering sirens from Homer's Odyssey, however Fraser's vocals seem to reverse the roles in that she becomes the siren.[8] The Cocteau Twins were unhappy with the track's commercial success. They were fearful that it would overshadow the band and resented that they were not given royalties.[18] Guthrie later said that he "hated" the original versions of the songs TMC had covered, and that he found TMC "pretentious and miserable".[19]
The second Big Star cover, "Holocaust", was arranged by Raymond and sung by Howard Devoto of the Buzzcocks and Magazine.[16] The original was written when Chilton was at a low point in his life and contains numerous allusions to addiction.[18] Devoto said that he "knew the name Big Star, but not their music", but agreed to participate having been impressed by the cover of "Song to the Siren".[16]
"Fond Affections" is a cover of a 1980 song by the short-lived 4AD band Rema-Rema. It was written by Marco Pirroni (formerly of Adam and the Ants) and Gary Asquith. The track is sung by Sharp to a sparse arrangement by Raymonde, and is very different to the theatrical original.[20]
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."[21] Guthrie was against the song's inclusion as he viewed it as Progressive rock sung by a "earnest bearded men".[19] 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.[15] 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 considered editing out some of what he described as "Kate Bush-isms" from the recording.[15]
Both "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 could contribute an original track.[22] Watts-Russell was impressed by her recording, which was eventually split into the songs "Waves Become Wings" and "Dreams Made Flesh".[23] 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.[24] 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.[22][23]
The album closes with "A Single Wish", built 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.[24] Raymonde created the cello sound using 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.[26]
Cover art
The cover art were produced by the graphic designer Vaughan Oliver and photographer Nigel Grierson, both founding members of 4AD's in-house design team 23 Envelope.[d][28][29] The black and white and out-of-focus photograph shows the visual artist and model Yvette (later known as Pallas Citroen), who was then studying for her final secondary-level exams, but was a friend of members of Modern English.[4][30][31] She remembers a brief photography session where Grierson "pulled some branches down from a tree, waved them in front of the lights, and took the shots".[31]
Grierson describes the final photograph as an attempt to "create an intriguing image, influenced by...the subconscious....and scenes from David Lynch's Eraserhead, and Luis Buñuel's Los Olvidados—eyes closed, hair pulled back." [31] The cover has been widely praised. Writing for The Guardian in 1996, the critic Susan Corrigan wrote that "It'll End in Tears"' cover helped establish the "spooky, ethereal 4AD aesthetic" which the label became renowned for.[27]
It'll End in Tears was met with universal acclaim on release and was highly praised by music weeklies such as Melody Maker and the NME.
Fryer's production is frequently praised, and was described in 2011 by the critic Net Raggett as maintaining "a mood of poised, shadowy romanticism, part dark ambient grind and part late-night string-laden recital".[4] 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 TMC's version of "Song to the Siren" as number 7 in his 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."[34]
A 2018 review by Classic Pop described the album as "swathed in lush, gothic-romantic swirls of echo and reverb".[35] The review describes Devoto's vocals as "like a hollow, haunted phantom" and praises both Sharp and Gerrard's vocals as "ghostly", before concluding that Fraser's contribution on "Song to the Siren" is the standout performance.[35] Numerous other 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."[4]
Influence
It'll End in Tears helped resurrect the careers of Tim Buckley and Alex Chilton, leading to renewed interest in Roy Harper's back catalogue. Because of "Song to the Siren"'s success, Buckley's album Starsailor has become Buckley's best-known album.[36]
The album's atmospheric and melancholic sound has had a hugely influential impact. It 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.[9][37] Both Anohni and Beach House have cited "Song to the Siren" as specifically important. Many other artists and bands have adapted This Mortal Coil's cover versions—described by the critic Sean O'Neal as "covers of covers".[9]
↑ This Mortal Coil never played live, although individual artists, notably the Cocteau Twins and Brendan Perry did incorporate songs into their own live performances.[4]
↑ The transgender artist Sharp is credited as Gordon on the album notes but is latterly known as Cindy Sharp or Cinder.[5]
↑ Both the Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance's debut albums, Garlands (1982) and Dead Can Dance (1984) were recorded at Blackwing.
↑ 23 Envelope were rebranded as v23 in 1988 after Oliver established a separate freelance company.[27]
Wilde, Jon (October 1983). "Cocteau Twins: Two's Companyy". ZigZag.
Book Sources
Aston, Martin (2013). Facing the Other Way: The Story of 4AD. London: The Friday Project. ISBN978-0-00-748961-9.
Buckley, Peter (2003). The Rough Guide to Rock. London: Rough Guides. ISBN1-85828-457-0.
Gomez-Palacio, Bryony (2011). Graphic Design, Referenced: A Visual Guide to the Language, Applications, and History of Graphic Design. Rockport Publishers. ISBN978-1-5925-3742-6.
Joynson, Vernon (2023). Discover UK Shoegaze and Dream Pop: A Music Guide to Shoegaze and Dream Pop with Artist Discographies and Biographical Information. Borderline Productions. ISBN978-1-8998-5525-4.
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