This Mortal Coil – It’ll End in Tears

It’s difficult thinking of your favourite albums of all time because ask me next week and it might be something different. First of all, I thought, I’ve sort of got to put the Cocteau Twins in, but then I thought, I’m going to put this one instead. I was a 4AD nut. This Mortal Coil is obviously a project of Ivo Watts-Russell, not a band, with a lot of cover versions on it with different singers, but one of the important things about them, I’ve realised, is that even though people were going on in the 1990s about getting into Big Star and Tim Buckley and Gene Clark, Ivo was the first portal into a lot of these bands for me, and I bet he was for other people. These covers are of bands he was listening to when he was younger in the 1970s, too. On this first album, you’ve got Big Star’s ‘Holocaust’ and Roy Harper’s ‘Another Day’. They were done in [Daniel Miller’s] Blackwing Studios with John Fryer, with quite a metallic sound – programmed drums, the guitars very affected, and the singers too. I know Song To the Siren is the one people go on about, but Another Day is the one I thought was really mind-blowingly beautiful. I also loved Wire’s ‘Not Me’, sung by Robbie Gray from Modern English.

I wanted to get a record deal on 4AD when we were starting out because it meant so much to me. And then the first Lush record was made in Blackwing with John Fryer as well! I’m still in touch with Ivo. I sent him Pearlies, and he loved it. I delayed sending it to him because I was nervous. That was a massive, massive confidence boost.