Rocktrospectiva: The Goth Classic "It'll End In Tears" Turns 40

 

Released on 8 October 1984, "It'll End In Tears" was the first album released by 4AD collective This Mortal Coil, consisted in a loose grouping of artists on the label brought together by label boss Ivo Watts-Russell, and reached #38 on the UK Albums Chart. The album spawned two singles "Song To The Siren" & "Kangaroo". 

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) 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. 

 

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.

 

It'll End In Tears Track List:

 

1. Kangaroo

2. Song To The Siren

3. Holocaust

4. Fyt

5. Fond Affections

6. The Last Ray

7. Another Day

8. Waves Become Wings

9. Barramundi

10. Dreams Made Flesh

11. Not Me

12. A Single Wish