In Praise of....<i>It'll End in Tears</i> by This Mortal Coil

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Continuing on with my tireless "In Praise of..." roster of (to my mind) classic, essential albums, I'd say It'll End in Tears -- like Destroyer by Kiss (ooh, I know....quite a leap there) -- retains a sound singularly all its own. To listen to it is to immerse yourself in its languid realm.

I'm a big fan of all three TMC albums, but this one especially distinguishes itself. I first heard Liz Fraser's ethereal rendition of "Song to the Siren" as the intro tape (!!!) to a mid-80's arena stop by Robert Plant (who, apparently, is a big fan of TMC and the Cocteaus). Heard the album a second time a few months later in a dingey record shack in the far flung exapnse of Newark, Ohio (Threshhold Audio, pedants!) and was singularly intrigued...wondering how this stirring, misty album found its way to the heartland of America (where Robert Palmer and Journey seemed to exclusively rule). I picked it up (along with a comparitively incongruous copy of Throb Throb by Naked Raygun) and have never been the same since.

Steeped in sepia-toned pixie dust, tracks drift seemlessly 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 studio. From Liz Fraser's, Lisa Gerrard's haunting vocals (to say nothiner of Cindytalk's [?!?!] Gordon Sharp) through subtle strings, guitars and hammered dulcimers that cut through the mist, its an audio wandering across a foggy, North Scottish beach in the dense, humid thickness of summer. Listening to the lovingly woven progression from "Waves Become Wings" into "Barramundi" (an exotic fish, apparently) and gradually into "Dreams Made Flesh" is to verily puncture the higher reaches of the velveteen skies and caress the very fulsome undercarriage of heaven.....or something.

It all plummets like a once-majestic, deflating, blue heron-shaped dirigible, however, upon the clumsy opening chords of "Not Me," wherein luckless Modern English's Robbie Grey (flanked by some Cocteaus and one Xmal Deutschlander) give it some whiney guitar pop that sticks out of the proceedings like an unsolicited erection during an otherwise beautific 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? But of course. Does it border dangerously on the forbidding frontiers of "New Age" music? Admittedly, yes. But it's still a rich, gorgeous piece of work.

What sayeth ye?

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Tuesday, 5 August 2003 13:03 (twenty-one years ago) link

you said it all except that i love "Not Me" and part of why i think it's great is because it DOES stick out like a sore, um, what you said.(that guitar sound is friggin' great too.) it makes me a little sad to think about where my head was at when i was 16 or 17 and playing this album. sheeesh. feels like a century ago.

― scott seward, Tuesday, 5 August 2003 13:20 (twenty-one years ago) link

oh, and i love all the albums too. maybe the last one less so except for the chris bell songs and some others i am probably forgetting. i never heard the hope blister album. is it good/great/okay/?

― scott seward, Tuesday, 5 August 2003 13:22 (twenty-one years ago) link

Getting Liz Fraser to sing real words as opposed to some stream of drivel about Persephone The Peppermint Pig's Pearly Dewdrops Hiccups (or whatever) seemed like an unfeasibly good idea and the single (which segued her version of Tim Buckleys' Song To The Siren with a a superb rendition of Modern English's 16 Days) was stunning, so the album was eagerly anticipated.

It started well too - Gordon Sharp singing Alex Chilton's Kanga-Roo; Song To The Siren; then Howard Devoto made a bit of a hash of another Alex Chilton song, Holocaust and from there it rapidly seemed to run out of steam.

I can't begin to imagine why they didn't include 16 Days on the album but it was an extraordinary decision.

― Stewart Osborne (Stewart Osborne), Tuesday, 5 August 2003 13:26 (twenty-one years ago) link

howard devoto isn't on this album!

― anthony kyle monday (akmonday), Tuesday, 5 August 2003 13:33 (twenty-one years ago) link

oh shit he is, never mind!

― anthony kyle monday (akmonday), Tuesday, 5 August 2003 13:33 (twenty-one years ago) link

Actually my memory's playing tricks too.

There was a 7" single with Song To The Siren on one side and Sixteen Days on the other and a 12" which segued a version of Sixteen days with a version of another Modern English song, Gathering Dust; THIS is the thing they should have included on the album!

― Stewart Osborne (Stewart Osborne), Tuesday, 5 August 2003 13:41 (twenty-one years ago) link

Actually, I think "Another Day" (Frazer's other turn, a Roy Harper cover) is the plum track.

Funny it would have been Newark, Ohio. I saw the Cocteau Twins on their first, five-date American tour of the 1980s, in Columbus.

For whatever reason (actually, I think it was because of Tim Kerr's fanzine, the Offense,) Ohio was a big early Cocteaus supporter.

― M Specktor (M Specktor), Tuesday, 5 August 2003 14:20 (twenty-one years ago) link

Ohio was a big early Cocteaus supporter.

Odd, that. I went to Denison University in Granville, Ohio (about 45 min. outside of Columbus)

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Tuesday, 5 August 2003 14:43 (twenty-one years ago) link

A friend of mine once looped the chorus of TMC's version of "Another Day" on his sampler It was absolutely gorgeous and we listened to it for, like, a half hour. But after that, the full record (and the rest of the song even) never quite measured up...

― Naive Teen Idol (Naive Teen Idol), Tuesday, 5 August 2003 14:45 (twenty-one years ago) link

Mmm, the things I could say about this album. But a lot of it has already been said -- got it right about the time I first heavily got into the Cocteaus and 4AD as label/concept, so it was good timing. And I suppose the place where I first heard Big Star -- I like these versions better, I think.

How odd that nobody has mentioned "A Single Wish" yet. Because to me it's always just the right conclusion, and the more so because it comes after "Not Me." But it's more than right as a conclusion, it's just...really just heartbreaking. Gordon Sharp need have done nothing else ever and I think I would call it one of the finest performances recorded. It calls visions to mind I can't even begin to describe, a state of feeling beyond words.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 5 August 2003 15:50 (twenty-one years ago) link

"A Single Wish" is indeed magnificent, Ned. Pity it comes after "Not Me" (which, as mentioned, clumsily diffuses the atmosphere).

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Tuesday, 5 August 2003 16:14 (twenty-one years ago) link

Ivo was a fan of unreleased Colin Newman tracks - like "Not Me", and supposedly Provisionally Entitled The Singing Fish was originally going to be a vocal album. Ivo said that some of the tracks were cut as vocal demos...!

if anyone has copies of those demos, please email me, or just print the names of the songs here (not "Fish 1", "Fish 2" etc).

― Paul (scifisoul), Tuesday, 5 August 2003 17:13 (twenty-one years ago) link

This album has been permanently welded into my personal Top-10 since I first heard it in 1985. I wore out the cassette copy I'd made (b/w Hounds of Love) by the time I left college. I paid painful import prices for the CD when it was first available (adjustment for inflation and spending power making that album cost something like $50 for me back then). "Song to the Siren" was played at my wedding. I dearly love this album and it would be one that I'd give myself third-degree burns rescuing from the fire.

― Matt Maxwell (Matt M.), Tuesday, 5 August 2003 17:29 (twenty-one years ago) link

I'd give myself third-degree burns rescuing from the fire.

Now THAT's what I'm talkin' `bout!

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Tuesday, 5 August 2003 17:39 (twenty-one years ago) link

Matt, bless your heart, I think that's the most non-sarcastic post I've seen from you ever. :-)

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 5 August 2003 17:48 (twenty-one years ago) link

Earnestness is the new irony.

― Matt Maxwell (Matt M.), Tuesday, 5 August 2003 17:54 (twenty-one years ago) link

I played it a zillion times back in the day.

― Sean (Sean), Tuesday, 5 August 2003 19:19 (twenty-one years ago) link

Ned, you really think TMC's "Kangaroo" is better than the version on Third/Sister Lovers? I'll agree it's good, but...better?

― Naive Teen Idol (Naive Teen Idol), Tuesday, 5 August 2003 19:35 (twenty-one years ago) link

The original "Kangaroo" is amazing, but when I think of the song, I think of the cover first. So the cover wins.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 5 August 2003 19:38 (twenty-one years ago) link

Can't argue with that, I guess. I have just always been so in awe of the production on that Big Star version. I mean, really...

― Naive Teen Idol (Naive Teen Idol), Tuesday, 5 August 2003 21:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

what is so good about the production on the Sister/Lovers original? I'm not asking in a sacaristic way but i'd like to know. I know not much about studio trickery? why is it so good. Ta.

― gallantseagull, Tuesday, 5 August 2003 21:25 (twenty-one years ago) link

I've owned this album on vinyl, cassette and CD. It's a timeless gem.

― David A. (Davant), Tuesday, 5 August 2003 23:48 (twenty-one years ago) link

I love the fact that it has covers of several of the saddest and most depressing songs ever written (I wonder if that was what Ivo was thinking when he picked them - "The answer is...none. None more black.")

"Holocaust" - I mean, Jesus. "You're a wasted face, you're a sad-eyed lie, you're a holocaust." Theoretically, using the holocaust as a metaphor might be dodgy and possibly offensive, but the song is so good and so bleak that it works.

"Fond Affections" - "There's no light at the end of it all. Let's all sit down and cry." Damn. I wish I had written that line.

"Another Day":
"I loved you a long time ago
where the wind's own forget-me-nots blow,
but I just couldn't let myself go
not knowing what on earth there was to know.
But I wish that I had,
'cos I'm feeling so sad
that I never had one of your children."

I mean, holy shit. You want to buy her an ice cream cone, as a way of saying "Sorry for your barren, lonely, childless life."

"Song to the Siren" and "Another Day" bookended the most devastating mix tape I've ever made.

The Hope Blister album is not too shabby - all covers, no big surprise (in regards to the "4AD sound"). The real treat is a great version of Chris Knox's "Outer Skin"; some covers aren't so hot, though (like John Cale's "Hanky Panky Nohow" - Yo La Tengo did it better).

― Ernest P. (ernestp), Wednesday, 6 August 2003 00:33 (twenty-one years ago) link

I can't stand the Big Star covers on this record - in fact I'm of the opinion that TMC slaughtered "Kangaroo". Fortunately "You and Your Sister" fared a million times better.

― electric sound of jim (electricsound), Wednesday, 6 August 2003 00:38 (twenty-one years ago) link

i'm beginning to think that whole reason i enjoy the red house painters is cuzza this mortal coil. or at least as far as the cover version thing goes. just put it through the RHP or TMC machine and out comes this bewildering creation.(although some-like the roy harper and the big star songs are pretty faithful actually) course, RHP would go to far sometimes. even i can't really justify their version of silly love songs. but everything else i like. will someone please mention how much better the TMC version of tarantula is than the colourbox version. ( and i'm a colourbox fan-and breakdown still rules as far as that 12 inch goes )

― scott seward, Wednesday, 6 August 2003 00:59 (twenty-one years ago) link

Paul... if I remember correctly only two versions of the Fish tracks are available with vocals on the CN1 CD single which came with initial copies of "Provisionally.." / "Not to" in 1988. They were "HCTFR" (which was "Fish 5" with vocals, and it stands for "Here Come The Feeling Rabbits"!) and "No doubt" (which was "Fish 1" and is downright marvellous). The CD is in my attic somewhere.

And I agree with pretty much what the majority of people are saying, "It'll end in tears" is a marvellous record from beginning to end and I really must play it again sometime.

― Rob M (Rob M), Wednesday, 6 August 2003 07:57 (twenty-one years ago) link

gallantseagull, what I love about the Big Star production of Kangaroo is just how it's all kind of collapsing underneath the melody, with only the otherworldly swooshes of Mellotron and Chilton's voice holding it together at all. But the main thing that makes it so fantastic is that it's so NOT what the song by itself would likely suggest.

Plus the way he sings the phrase "cool jerk" is just fantastic.

― Naive Teen Idol (Naive Teen Idol), Wednesday, 6 August 2003 18:51 (twenty-one years ago) link

also, if any of you have seen the Blue Velvet featurette on the DVD, there's a part where Angelo Badalementi & David Lynch basing the music of that flick (& Twin Peaks, later) on "Song to the Siren."

plus, i like how Hans Zimmer ripped about half the soundtrack to Gladiator from that song...

Shit, they useta play that track on "Big Sonic Heaven" every week.

― Kingfish (Kingfish), Wednesday, 6 August 2003 20:03 (twenty-one years ago) link

one year passes...

REVIVE!

This is one of those nights here at the News Desk where's there's (a) no big news goin' on --- which, by the way, I'm notM complaining about -- and (b) not much activity on ILM. So, how do we rectify that? We punch up iTunes and let it play a random selection. For each tune that airs, find the corresponding thread and opine boorishly, which is what I'm doing now.

So, you guessed it, "Song to the Siren" is now melifluously spreading its gossamer wings and gliding out of my speakers like some shimmering, translucent heron . I remember being a freshman in college and screwing in a black light bulb (!!!) into my desk lamp, turning the overhead lights off, opening up beer after beer and playing this song endlessly at ridiculously high volumes,.....and never growing tired of it.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Saturday, 16 April 2005 07:21 (nineteen years ago) link

yes me too. details slightly different but yes.

― mullygrubbr (bulbs), Saturday, 16 April 2005 07:26 (nineteen years ago) link

My own Song to the Siren story: I had just finished (within an hour or two, anyway) playing the TMC album, and I'm now flipping through the channels on my cable TV and come across an episode of The Monkees that is just ending. Mickey Dolenz then comes on and says "Folks, this episode was a little short so we've decided to give you something extra. Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Tim Buckley." And the camera cuts to Buckley on a stool with an acoustic guitar, and he plays "Song To The Siren."

― nickn (nickn), Saturday, 16 April 2005 18:35 (nineteen years ago) link

This was in the 80s, by the way, that reads like it happened today. And it's also one of my favorite albums.

― nickn (nickn), Saturday, 16 April 2005 18:37 (nineteen years ago) link

In my opinion, Buckley's version (the original, obv.) sounds like an constipated bull walrus finally relieving his bowels compared to TMC's.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Saturday, 16 April 2005 18:59 (nineteen years ago) link

haha - i agree with Alex! and i LOVE buckley.

― mullygrubbr (bulbs), Sunday, 17 April 2005 04:49 (nineteen years ago) link

I wonder what Peter Gabriel's version of Song To The Siren might have sounded like. God that sounds really blasphemous considering Liz Fraser doesn't it?

― The Silent Disco of Glastonbury (Bimble...), Sunday, 17 April 2005 04:59 (nineteen years ago) link

I just played the original to give you a scathing riposte, Alex, but with the first line I had to admit that "constipated" is the first thing I thought of. But maybe a bull seal instead of a walrus. Anyhow, the version played on that Monkees was not a lip-sync with the record, but a performance done just for that, and I'm pretty sure it was much better than the LP version. (Still no TMC, I'll admit.)

― nickn (nickn), Sunday, 17 April 2005 05:21 (nineteen years ago) link

the monkees show version is on the morning glory 2cd comp.

― mullygrubbr (bulbs), Sunday, 17 April 2005 06:13 (nineteen years ago) link

monkees show version

― mullygrubbr (bulbs), Sunday, 17 April 2005 06:46 (nineteen years ago) link

In fact that's the only Tim Buckley CD(s) I have, and I played the first version without even noticing the second. The second is better.

― nickn (nickn), Sunday, 17 April 2005 07:31 (nineteen years ago) link

Robert Plant did a cover of it not too long back, I gather. I've never heard it, tho'.

― Alex in NYC (vassifer), Sunday, 17 April 2005 15:17 (nineteen years ago) link

two years pass...

For the love of a non-existent god, this album...

I am being transported to another universe now. I'm going to be 15 years old again very soon.

There simply is no better music to play at 3 AM than this. And I still say TMC's version of Big Star's "Holocaust", with a Mr. Howard Devoto on vocals is absolutely the saddest song humankind has ever known.

It cannot possibly get any better than this album. Look high, look low. Look in your navel. You won't find it.

― Bimble, Sunday, 9 March 2008 09:14 (sixteen years ago) link

I salute any brave souls who may still own it on vinyl.

― Bimble, Sunday, 9 March 2008 09:19 (sixteen years ago) link

I have never heard this all the way through. Seems like I have some catching up to do...

― Spencer Chow, Sunday, 9 March 2008 13:25 (sixteen years ago) link

Never the once, Spencer? Yer missing out.

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, 9 March 2008 14:03 (sixteen years ago) link

one of my favorite albums of all time. i'll have to play it now. this album is so strong it makes the following TMC albums really disappointing shadows; I can't listen to either of them all the way through.

they should reissue with with 16 days/gathering dust on it

― akm, Sunday, 9 March 2008 14:10 (sixteen years ago) link

so classic. I would love a reissue with the added 12".

― sleeve, Sunday, 9 March 2008 17:37 (sixteen years ago) link

three years pass...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/nov/17/song-to-the-siren-classic

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 18 November 2011 16:13 (twelve years ago) link

no Messiah, no credibility

― Much Ado About Nuttin (DJP), Friday, 18 November 2011 16:21 (twelve years ago) link

But they talk about trance and etc

― Ned Raggett, Friday, 18 November 2011 16:23 (twelve years ago) link

twelve years pass...

Forty years old today.

― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 1 October 2024 15:42 (two weeks ago) link

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In Praise of....It'll End in Tears by This Mortal Coil