This Mortal Coil - It'll End In Tears - vinyl LP + inner UK CAD411 4AD (1986)

	£		18
	$		24

**I AM AWAY ON HOLIDAY, JUNE 5TH-17TH, AND SO WILL POST OUT ANY PURCHASES AS SOON AS I CAN ON MY RETURN. PLEASE DON'T BUY IF YOU NEED URGENT DELIVERY. MANY APOLOGIES FOR ANY INCONVENIENCE OR LACK OF COMMUNICATION WHILE I AM AWAY.**
Ethereal, gothic fabulousness from 4AD supergroup, This Mortal Coil, on lovely original 1986 pressing vinyl. Now quite hard to get hold of in such excellent condition. Beautiful sleeve artwork and photography, even lovelier sounds inside. Vintage sweeping strings, luscious guitars, intricate dreamy soundscapes and some stunning vocal turns. Put on your laciest evening wear and hurl yourself onto a thousand goosedown pillows in a forgotten attic to listen in rapture.  Outer and inner sleeves and disc all excellent. 
Sample sound https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrjohQ_PDTY&index=2&list=PLBDEAA5C068C7E771&ab_channel=My80sUnderground - swoon!
Product review

When This Mortal Coil's astonishing first album It'll End In Tears emerged in 1984, it was a revelation. An amalgam of esoteric cover versions and eldritch atmospherics, it drew a line in the sand, signalling a shift away from the goth-tinged fripperies of The Birthday Party and Bauhaus to a much softer, ethereal 4AD 'sound' (the beginnings of which were evident in the Cocteaus'Lullabies EP and debut album Garlands).

With Robin Guthrie's oscillating guitars, swathed in FX-pedal atmospherics, and Elizabeth Fraser's spectral voice, the Cocteaus were certainly half-synergists for This Mortal Coil's entirely crepuscular oeuvre; but the project really took shape as an extension of Ivo's desire to allow 4AD artists greater creative expression, and the option of recording carefully-chosen covers of precious and forgotten songs. That casual directive precipitated the release of the Sixteen Days/Gathering Dust EP in 1983 – This Mortal Coil's year zero – but it was the inordinate beauty of the B-side 'Song To The Siren', a version of the Tim Buckley standard, that bewitched legions of stunned listeners.

Despite Buckley's sublime original, Fraser's supremely haunting rendition marks This Mortal Coil out as the go-to version; there remains something infinitely alluring about listening to the eccentric, seemingly vulnerable chanteuse as she sings about the sea as a metaphor for the devastation of love. "I'm as puzzled as the new-born child / I'm as riddled as the tide," she trills, and despite repeated listens, it's an unadulterated pleasure that keeps on giving, enhanced only by watching the promo video. In it Fraser, all piercing eyes and quivering, expressive lips, delivers those powerful words with a sensual bluster that doesn't so much capture your heart as forcibly penetrate it with a hefty shard of glass.

How could you not be seduced? '...Siren' is by far the most glittering track, but the rest of the album, quintessentially ornate and doleful, still brims with depth and emotion, often so potent that the music itself seems to physically ache. There are plenty of choice moments: the sparse, druggy hues of 'The Last Ray', with its hollow bass riff, languid synths and echo-laden guitar chops, recalling the producerly genius of Factory's legendary Martin Hannett; the apocalyptic, Vangelis-like atonal drift of 'Fyt'; 'Dreams Made Flesh', driven by exotic Chinese dulcimer and Lisa Gerrard's swirling, mournful contralto, hints at the neo-classical sound that would later fully spawn Dead Can Dance; and on 'Another Day', Fraser even manages to sound like a seraphic Kate Bush. The mood, relentlessly gloomy and futile but strangely infectious, is momentarily lifted by a brisk, anomalous cover of Colin Newman's 'Not Me', sung by Modern English's Robbie Grey.