This Mortal Coil

A collaboration, not a band

This Mortal Coil was a studio-only collaboration created by Ivo Watts-Russell, who founded 4AD in 1980. Musicians, mostly from the label's roster, rotated through to record cover versions of songs that mattered to him, with John Fryer producing; the name comes from a line in Spirit's "Dream Within a Dream", alluding to Hamlet. It never played live. The idea came in 1983 after he saw Modern English run "Sixteen Days" and "Gathering Dust" together as an encore on an early US tour; they declined to re-record the medley, so he assembled Elizabeth Fraser and Robin Guthrie of the Cocteau Twins, the vocalist Gordon Sharp and some Modern English members. The EP Sixteen Days/Gathering Dust came out on September 2, 1983, and "Song to the Siren", placed on the B-side, became the A-side.

It'll End in Tears (October 1984) was recorded at Blackwing Studios in London, a deconsecrated church, produced by Watts-Russell and Fryer, with Simon Raymonde arranging and playing; Lisa Gerrard, Robbie Grey, Howard Devoto and Cindy Sharp sang, and Fraser and Guthrie took no part afterward. It reached 38 in the UK and 1 on the indie albums chart, and Pitchfork gave it 9.0. Filigree & Shadow (September 22, 1986) was a double LP of 25 tracks, 13 of them instrumental, reaching 53, and Blood (April 22, 1991) reached 28 and was announced as the final album, with Kim Deal and Tanya Donelly among the voices. A 4-CD box, 1983-1991, appeared in the US on March 30, 1993, and Watts-Russell told Puncture that the project was very much over. Remastered editions came as a box in November 2011 and as individual albums in December 2018.

The Hope Blister, formed by Watts-Russell in June 1998, followed. The records cover Alex Chilton, Roy Harper, Tim Buckley, Colin Newman and Rema-Rema, and Trouser Press called the project a studio-only 4AD house band. Martin Aston's book Facing the Other Way tells the label's story.