- Kangaroo
- Song To The Siren
- Holocaust
- Fyt
- Fond Affections
- The Last Ray
- Another Day
- Waves Become Wings
- Barramundi
- Dreams Made Flesh
- Not Me
- A Single Wish
Elegy in Shadows
When It’ll End in Tears emerged in 1984 under the ethereal banner of This Mortal Coil, it felt less like an album and more like a séance - a gathering of ghosts summoned through sound. Conceived by 4AD founder Ivo Watts-Russell, it brought together artists from Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, and other kindred spirits to create something that defied category. What they conjured was not pop, not ambient, not rock, but atmosphere incarnate: the sound of sorrow remembered as beauty.
The genius of It’ll End in Tears lies in its restraint. Each note seems suspended in air, every breath an echo from a dream half-forgotten. Reverb becomes memory, silence becomes language. The musicians play not at emotion but through it, weaving textures so delicate they seem to shimmer and disintegrate in the same instant. This is music for the in-between spaces - between love and loss, waking and sleep, heaven and earth.
The album feels communal yet deeply solitary. Different voices emerge like shifting apparitions - each distinct, yet united by a shared fragility. The interpretations of older songs are not covers in the traditional sense; they are reincarnations, stripped of context and reimagined as pure feeling. What results is an aural cathedral, its architecture built from melancholy and grace.
It’ll End in Tears captures the paradox at the heart of human experience: that beauty often lives in ruin, and that the ache of impermanence can be exquisite. Listening to it is like walking through candlelight reflected on water - flickering, elusive, endlessly tender.
Decades on, the album remains timeless precisely because it exists outside of time. It is not an artifact of the 1980s but an invocation - a reminder that heartbreak, when illuminated by art, can become its own kind of sanctuary.
The genius of It’ll End in Tears lies in its restraint. Each note seems suspended in air, every breath an echo from a dream half-forgotten. Reverb becomes memory, silence becomes language. The musicians play not at emotion but through it, weaving textures so delicate they seem to shimmer and disintegrate in the same instant. This is music for the in-between spaces - between love and loss, waking and sleep, heaven and earth.
The album feels communal yet deeply solitary. Different voices emerge like shifting apparitions - each distinct, yet united by a shared fragility. The interpretations of older songs are not covers in the traditional sense; they are reincarnations, stripped of context and reimagined as pure feeling. What results is an aural cathedral, its architecture built from melancholy and grace.
It’ll End in Tears captures the paradox at the heart of human experience: that beauty often lives in ruin, and that the ache of impermanence can be exquisite. Listening to it is like walking through candlelight reflected on water - flickering, elusive, endlessly tender.
Decades on, the album remains timeless precisely because it exists outside of time. It is not an artifact of the 1980s but an invocation - a reminder that heartbreak, when illuminated by art, can become its own kind of sanctuary.
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My personal view:
It'll End in Tears is the first studio album by 4AD collective This Mortal Coil, an umbrella title for a loose grouping of guest musicians and vocalists brought together by label boss Ivo Watts-Russell. On this first release, we find artists like Elizabeth Fraser and Robin Guthrie (Cocteau Twins), Lisa Gerrard (Dead can Dance), and Howard Devoto (ex Buzzcocks and Magazine). Many of the songs are dream pop style covers, including gems like the Alex Chilton songs Kangaroo and Holocaust, Roy Harper's Another Day and the fabulous Song To The Siren, originally by Tim Buckley. Other tracks that stand out are Lisa Gerrard's Waves Become Wings and Dreams Made Flesh.