There was that moment in 1984 when This Mortal Coil recorded Song to the Siren, and that seemed to nail what 4AD stood for at the time. I remember hearing it reviewed on the original Round Table (I think Annie Lennox was one of the guests), and everyone was falling over themselves to lavish praise on it. And they referred back to the Tim Buckley original. When I put Song to the Siren on a mixtape for a Jeremy, I wrote on the sleeve notes about it being a cover version of a song by Tim Buckley "whoever he is". But I could not keep this ignorance for long, and when I saw this LP I had to buy it, even at the exorbitant price of £7.99 from Our Price.
There are other, much longer (and cheaper!) Tim Buckley compilations around these days. Nevertheless, this one (which you can't get any more) does a pretty good job in twelve songs, and kept me happy for a long time. Over those songs, you can hear him develop from the poppy Orbisonesque approach of the first album through the psychedelic narrative of Goodbye and Hello (which always reminds me of Neil Young's Broken Arrow) to the vibes-and-acoustic-strumming songs that dominate the second side of this LP. The latter sound to me like a downbeat version of Astral Weeks. I said before that you can now get most Tim Buckley albums for a fiver, but I see that isn't true of Blue Afternoon, from which three of the best Side 2 tracks originate. I'll have to keep an eye out for that.
Finally, it's all rounded off by Song to the Siren, the only song that appeared twice in John Peel's end-of-millennium Festive 50 (Tim Buckley at no.40; This Mortal Coil at no.10).
Comments