Artist: This Mortal Coil
LP: 7" single
For a label whose releases have been so heavily influential on my musical tastes over the years, I realized that 4AD has been grossly under-represented on this blog, with only four postings since I started this thing back in August of 2008. And two of those entries are for Dance Chapter, who, though I like them just fine, aren't one of the groups that initially drew me to the label.
This Mortal Coil was a 4AD label band (Wikipedia calls it "a gothic dream pop collective"), drawing together musicians from the label's roster, and from other labels too. As you can see in the song credits below, the contributing musicians' primary group is listed along with their name. This basically provided a musical scavenger hunt for me whenever I drove the two-and-a-half hours from Yakima to Seattle, where I would then run around Tower Records grabbing up whatever I could find by the bands on my list like a kid in the proverbial candy store. I ended up with several Cindytalk LPs, but I don't have those now. Gordon Sharp's work there didn't really do much for me, but his vocals on the first This Mortal Coil LP, and on "Kangaroo" in particular, are stunning. This Mortal Coil opened up a new world of music for this effeminate, dreamy-eyed teen who was stuck in a dusty Central Washington apple-farming town, and who's favorite music at the time was by Sheena Easton and Dead or Alive.
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