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This Studio Project

When This Mortal Coil delivered their debut disc, It'll End in Tears, it was seen as strange —viewed, in some quarters, with equal parts suspicion, bafflement, and condescension— that they weren't actually a band. The mythology of rock'n'roll still stood tall back in 1984, and the model of the band-as-gang was, in many ways, all that anyone knew. This Mortal Coil were anything but a gang.


They were an amorphous recording concern, with various members floating in and out, depending on the track. 30 years on, that's a fairly common approach. Back then, it marked TMC as something other.

This Mortal Coil were effectively the brainchild of 4AD founder Ivo Watts-Russell. Working with producer John Fryer, he brought aboard artists signed, largely, to the label to work on the compositions; making them, for many, 4AD's "house band." The key collaborateurs, in this set-up, were Elizabeth Fraser and Robin Guthrie of the Cocteau Twins; Fraser's voice, though only employed on a handful of songs, becoming so synonymous with This Mortal Coil that many thought of them as Cocteau Twins side project.

It was Fraser and Guthrie's reading of Tim Buckley's "Song to the Siren" —one of the first experimental recordings with this 'floating' approach— that convinced Watts-Russell that This Mortal Coil needed to be a more full-time endeavor. With no rhythmic elements at all, the Cocteaus' reinterpretation sets Fraser's huge swooping, fluttering voice to implied ambient drones and off-hand brushes of guitar-string.

The song was a minor —but incredibly persistent— hit in the UK, staying on the indie singles chart for more than a year. Its success lead to a rekindled interest in Buckley's music; which, at the time, laying out-of-print and neglected. And, it lead to This Mortal Coil's 1984 debut, It'll End in Tears, finding an eternal audience.

Afloat on Shipless Oceans

"The Song to the Siren" cover, recorded when Watts-Russell and Fryer were still wondering what this project they'd undertaken would amount to, ended up setting the tenor for the project. The gentle, barely-there minimalism of the arrangement played into the album's overall aesthetic, and its spartan, Rothko-ish approach to rendering a musical canvas.

And the notion of the noble cover became entrenched in the TMC identity. It'll End in Tears finds Fraser also caroling Roy Harper's "Another Day," and, in a pair of Big Star covers ("Kangaroo" from #1 Record and "Holocaust" from Third/Sister Lovers), there's a definite hint of the fallen, half-forgotten, neglected-artist in the chosen covers.

The two Big Star songs are handled with completely different approach: Cindytalk's Gordon Sharp all drama, tremor, and robust tenor over a boinging bassline on "Kangaroo"; Magazine's Howard Devoto shrugging and mumbling over lingering piano chords and sad strings on "Holocaust." In turn, This Mortal Coil is, by its very nature, prone to differences in delivery. The influence of composers, vocalists, and collaborateurs can, at times, be huge; Lisa Gerrard from Dead Can Dance is the most unstoppable influence, turning the project in the wailing, world-music gothickry of her own band with, seemingly, a flick of her wrist.

But Watts-Russell and Fryer manage to, somehow, keep a prevailing mood and aesthetic together. It's the almost complete lack of drums —and, in many ways, of hard rhythms— that is the prevailing quality of It'll End in Tears. Unmoored and free-floating, the songs herein have a tendency towards the ethereal; This Mortal Coil's debut rising into a rarefied atmosphere of tasteful aesthetics and swooning ambience.

Record Label: 4AD
Release Date: October 1, 1984