Sunday, July 03, 2011

A Siren's Calling

   Nearly three decades ago, the 4AD Records "supergroup" This Mortal Coil produced three albums--It'll End in Tears (Oct. 1984), Filigree and Shadow (Sept. 1986), and Blood (1991). Each was a conceptual piece in which instrumentals both airy and heavy linked curiously, often hauntingly, reinterpreted songs originally sung by 4AD and other artists. (Founded in 1980 by Ivo Watts-Russell and Peter Kent, 4AD today is home to such indie heavyweights as Bon Iver, The National and Iron and Wine.)
   One of the most haunting--and, for my money, the most powerful--tunes is the group's cover of the 1960s/'70s singer/songwriter Tim Buckley's "Song to the Siren," from the first record. Actually, although it was released under the name This Mortal Coil, the version is performed by guitarist Robin Guthrie and vocalist Elizabeth Fraser (photos below, then and now), who comprised the group the Cocteau Twins (third photo). So in effect it's a Cocteau Twins performance.






   The aching story of a lovelorn sailor, "STTS" was penned by Buckley and his writing partner Larry Beckett, and released on his 1970 album Starsailor. Buckley was popular and respected, but the Buckley family luck ran thin. Buckley died June 29, 1975 of a heroin overdose. His son, the beautiful musician Jeff Buckley--you've likely heard his version of "Hallelujah"--died in 1997, aged twenty-eight, under tragic if mysterious circumstances: he disappeared while swimming in the Mississippi River. His death was later ruled an accidental drowning.
   In the TMC/CT version of "STTS," Robin Guthrie's ethereal electric guitar creates a logy sense of oceanic dislocation. Elizabeth Fraser's vocals pierce the fog, her voice as crystalline as her enunciation is garbled. The effect is heart-wrenching: a profound, indeed bottomless, sense of loss.
   The song originally was released as a 7" single (record) in the early '80s, and appeared on the album version sometime after. It was enormously popular in an underground way: it never got past #66 on the British charts, but it stayed on the charts for something like 100 weeks.
   I first heard it in the late '80s, and it shredded me. You can have your revisionist '80s bullshit; for a lot of us, it was a time of mass death. A good portion of the gay male community was wiped out by AIDS while the sitting president did nothing. His name was Ronald Reagan, and, speaking of revisionism, remember that name and his inaction on AIDS when you next hear Republicans laud him. One hundred thousand, seven hundred and seventy-seven AIDS-related deaths between 1981 and 1990 (figures here). Reagan didn't utter the word "AIDS" until 1987, six years into the epidemic.
   Fuck him.
   Anyway, this song, like many others, became a soundtrack for that grim era, and so it has special resonance for people who attended funeral after funeral of friends who died young and horribly. (By 1989, AIDS was the second-leading cause of death among American males ages 25-44.)
   I'd always thought that at my own funeral--to which you are all invited, by the way, and which I hope happens in roughly thirty-five years, cuz why not live to ninety?--I'd make everyone sit through the entire Rolling Stones Exile on Main Street album. There I'd be--fucking with people from beyond the grave. But I think perhaps just "Torn and Frayed," from that album, followed by the TMC version of "Song to the Siren," would do the trick. 
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   Below are some "STTS"-related items. First, you'll find a link to a website in which a guy decodes differences between the Buckley and TMC "Song to the Siren" versions. The lyrics are printed below that.
   Then come videos. The first is the official This Mortal Coil music video. The second shows the Cocteau Twins performing the song on an undated TV show. The third contains a live audio version from a 1994 CT performance in France. The fourth shows Tim Buckley performing the song in 1968 on the TV show The Monkees (!). In the fifth, Robert Plant, channeling Bryan Ferry, offers a likable version on VH1's Storytellers that gives more than a passing nod to the great Led Zeppelin tune "The Rain Song." And, oh, what the hell--the sixth shows Zep ripping "The Rain Song" live. The seventh and eighth are, respectively, studio and live versions of Jeff Buckley's version of "Hallelujah." Like father, like son. 
   Enjoy, if that's the word I'm looking for. 

   The "STTS" lyric deconstruction appears here
   And these are the lyrics as sung by Fraser, with Buckley's originals in parentheses: 

On the floating (Long afloat on) shipless oceans
I did all my best to smile
'Til your singing eyes and fingers
Drew me loving to your isle
And you sang, "Sail to me.  Sail to me, let me enfold you.
Here I am.  Here I am, waiting to hold you."

Did I dream you dreamed about me?
Were you here when I was (full sail) flotsam (Were you hare when I was fox)
Now my foolish boat is leaning
Broken lovelorn on your rocks (now)
For you sing, "Touch me not.  Touch me not, come back tomorrow."
Oh my heart, oh my heart shies from the sorrow.

Well I'm as puzzled as a newborn child.
I'm as riddled as the tide.
Should I stand amid the breakers,
Or should I lie with death, my bride?
Hear me sing, "Swim to me.  Swim to me, let me enfold you.
Here I am.  Here I am, waiting to hold you."
















   

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