Facing the Other Way

by Martin Aston

  Donelly: ‘We were so concerned about artifice. In some ways, it was our generation’s aesthetic – don’t mess with the roots, don’t dress the skeleton. Even reverb sounded slick to us. Of course, we can hear now that the album’s not that over-produced. There was nothing cluttering or getting in the way and at the end of the day, we did work well with Gil.’

  Still, Hersh says, ‘Ivo should have produced us. Gil was going places we weren’t going to go. Producers need to discern a style within the material and exaggerate it, and that’s what didn’t work for us. I adored Gil but to ask him to rein in Throwing Muses just wasn’t fair. He didn’t understand why we wanted it to be raw.’

  With Hersh resisting every suggestion from Norton that she ‘sing’, the band used up its allotted time in the American studio, so Norton had to mix the album back in the UK. Narcizo flew over as the Muses’ representative. ‘Gil and I had little battles along the way, like he wanted a string section on “Hate My Way”. I’d say I wanted things to sound amateur, and he’d say, “That’s because you are amateur”. I love that album, but it felt so different to how we felt about ourselves. I was so nervous coming home with it, thinking the others would be so disappointed.’

  Ivo: ‘“Hate My Way”, “Delicate Cutters”, “Soul Soldier” – it’s the freedom in Kristin’s voice, the naïvety of her rhythm guitar and Tanya’s lead guitar, the absolute brilliance of the rhythm section. David was such an extraordinary and unusual drummer. It’s a real shame that Kristin wasn’t happy with the way it sounded and it’s probably little compensation that it got such unanimously positive responses.’

  Hersh: ‘I eventually made peace with the album, but it’s hard when it’s you that’s sounding nuts. Ivo chose our most harrowing songs and left out the fun ones that had been a relief to us. Ivo didn’t want any relief! I thought, that’s just mean, no one will want to listen.’

  There was another tussle over the artwork, where the band, for all their youth, dug their heels in. ‘Everything else [on 4AD] was so smooth and wispy and gauzy and pretty,’ Hersh recalls. ‘Poor Vaughan, he wanted it to be beautiful but we said, we’re not beautiful, we’re not nice! He said, “Why would you fuck it up on purpose?” That’s what being the first American band on 4AD was about. It was certainly a shift.’

  David Narcizo: ‘We should have just let Vaughan do what he wanted, but we had a desperate need not to come across as pretentious. We knew our music sometimes evoked surreal and strange feelings, but we wanted it to be normal, a result of regular work, and not scare people away.’

  The finished artwork – against 4AD/23 Envelope tradition – even featured small photos of the band at their request, floating in a sea of exquisite calligraphy that ushered in a new era for 23 Envelope. The lettering and design was the work of Chris Bigg, who admits his chronic dyslexia had held him back at school but had had an accidentally beneficial effect: ‘I like the shape of words rather than what they’re saying,’ he admits. ‘I look at shapes and where the word sits against an image.’

  Bigg was a perfect fit at 4AD and alongside Vaughan Oliver, who would take the role of art director when Bigg took on the role of designer. He was a fan of the original Bauhaus art movement and of The Birthday Party, Wire and beautifully designed album covers, back to his father’s record collection, he says, ‘all the old classics, Santana, The Beatles, all the inner bags and lyric sheets … I used to dream of doing it myself one day.’

  Born in Brighton where he also studied graphic design at the local university, Bigg wrote his dissertation on post-punk sleeve design with a focus on 23 Envelope. Vaughan Oliver had been the only one of the leading sleeve designers that Bigg approached during his research to respond. Bigg later visited Alma Road to hand out homemade Head Over Heels T-shirts. And when Oliver was deskbound after breaking his foot playing football and had an impending deadline for Colourbox’s album, Bigg had been temporarily summoned to do the legwork between art desk and darkroom. ‘And I’ve been running around after Vaughan for the last twenty years,’ he sighs.

  Bigg had become a semi-permanent fixture at Alma Road to assist Steve Webbon on Situation 2 projects, but, ‘under heavy direction from Vaughan,’ says Bigg, he gravitated to 4AD, starting with Throwing Muses after Oliver had baulked at the band’s insistence on photos. Bigg mirrored Oliver’s pioneering design, starting with Xmal Deutschland’s Qual EP, of putting song titles on the front cover. ‘I didn’t want an obvious front or back, but something more anonymous,’ Bigg explains. ‘For me, it harked back to the feel of Birthday Party sleeves. It’s a bit naïve for my tastes now, but it suited the project.’

  Ivo: ‘Chris’s jagged yet flowing logo referred to the unborn Dylan heartbeat in Kristin’s belly while she was recording the songs. It suited their music perfectly.’

  Throwing Muses was also significantly the first 4AD project to be actively promoted in America. Sheri Hood was working in the college radio section of the New York-based promotions company Thirsty Ear when Beggars Banquet bought into the company. Hood was designated 4AD’s releases, with Throwing Muses something of a trial by fire. ‘They were so unbelievable and different,’ Hood recalls. ‘Listening back, the album fit really well, in that edge-of-madness, crazy-great way, but it caused a lot of head-scratching at college radio.’

  John Peel also found the band a challenge. He’d remained supportive of 4AD, and Ivo was convinced he’d respond to Throwing Muses – after all, the similarly angular and jerky The Fall was his favourite band. But he didn’t respond to a test pressing, and when Ivo eventually tracked Peel down, he admitted he’d been listening to the album when his producer, John Walters, had enquired, ‘Who’s that then, Melanie?’ The American singer-songwriter best known for her flower-power whimsy had once visited Peel in hospital when he had jaundice and, to the DJ’s eternal embarrassment, serenaded him from the end of his bed. Peel would never give Throwing Muses another chance, but then Ivo knew all about judgements based on emotional reactions.

  While Throwing Muses were doing the Cocteau Twins tour in the UK, the band was persuaded by its album reviews to re-try Gil Norton. Four more, equally sublime tracks were recorded at Blackwing for the Chains Changed EP, plus a new version of The Doghouse Cassette’s ‘Fish’ for a forthcoming 4AD compilation. Hersh admits she still battled with Norton, though Ivo is adamant that the EP ‘was their best ever recording’. He believes that ‘It’s unpolished and unembellished, and it’s what it was like to hear them in a room, with no loss of energy. It was still the final nail in the coffin of them and Gil.’

  It was so much easier to be artist, producer and label, a luxury that This Mortal Coil had afforded Ivo, with no risk of communication breakdown. After nearly two years of plotting, accumulating and mixing, the collective’s second album, Filigree & Shadow, was ready. By the time Ivo had called a halt, he had 74 minutes of music, 25 finished pieces including 13 instrumentals, with five the proud work of Ivo and John Fryer alone. It was enough for a double album, 4AD’s first, an act of hubris given this privilege was being granted to himself.

  In 1985, double albums were still considered relics of a wasteful age, but with the painstakingly stitched mood flowing over four individual sides of vinyl (and one single CD), Filigree & Shadow promised an immersive experience and a timely reminder of a style of rock music that was to come back into fashion, unencumbered by punk’s didacts. The album expanded the midnight mood of It’ll End In Tears with only ‘Drugs’ (like ‘Not To’ on the first album) interrupting the slow, dream-like descent down a dark path that began with the album title, named after a favourite track by the Texan psych-pop band Fever Tree (also, incidentally, Ivo’s favourite band name). The artwork drove the point home, a stark black-and-white close-up of a returning Pallas Citroen, her face half in shadow, looking more disturbed than the sleepwalking state she’d portrayed on It’ll End In Tears.

  Ivo’s original choice for cover star had been his first proper crush, actress Maria Schneider, most famously Marlon
Brando’s degraded foil in Last Tango in Paris. ‘She was beautiful then and still so in her final days,’ he says. ‘The problem was that Maria did not trust men one bit. I knew she was a lesbian because she, very publicly, checked herself into an insane asylum to be with her partner. It was a difficult conversation, I explained I was a fan and that This Mortal Coil was a personal project and it would mean so much if she’d grace the sleeve. We agreed I’d send her It’ll End In Tears, a tape of Filigree & Shadow and a copy of Nigel’s recent book of photos, but I must have done little to convince her that I wasn’t a pervert as I never heard back. So we decided to use Pallas again.’

  Pallas Citroen was also the face of 4AD’s first ten-inch single, a double A-side of ‘Come Here My Love’ and ‘Drugs’, which preceded Filigree & Shadow. ‘We did endless shoots,’ Citroen recalls. ‘Nigel [Grierson] built a huge sandpit on the studio roof that I sat in for a couple of days, or he uses infra-red lighting with me naked, or I was rolling down a mountain. I didn’t get paid much, but it wasn’t about the money, I just liked seeing what came out of it. And I loved the music, so it was great to be involved.’

  Beautifully chilled, swathed in texture using the full extent of the FX toolbox, the mood of the album was described by Pitchfork when reviewing the This Mortal Coil box set in 2011 as ‘spooky and woozy’.† Given it was made in batches, shaped by a man more used to signing bands than directing them, it was a substantial achievement. Without the unique slant that Elizabeth Fraser and Lisa Gerrard had brought to It’ll End In Tears, the new album did resemble a collective more than any preceding 4AD gathering. And without an obvious spearhead such as ‘Song To The Siren’, and spun out over 74 minutes, it also felt more like a cohesive piece of work. At the same time, Filigree & Shadow lacked those incredible voices, and a song to rival ‘Song To The Siren’.

  The press reaction was decidedly mixed. 4AD aficionado Chris Roberts made ‘Come Here My Love’ single of the week in Sounds, and rightly pointed out how ‘Drugs’ was ‘very Colourbox’ – and should have added that Colourbox should sound more like this, with some of The Wolfgang Press’s sharp edges. Sounds also gave Filigree & Shadow five stars: ‘The pain and love it’s soaked in drip like nectar onto a thirsty tongue … the perfect soundtrack for evenings spent alone with just self-doubt and love as company.’

  But one man’s 4AD is another man’s indulgence, and the two traditionally weightier opinions from NME and even the perennially 4AD-supporting Melody Maker were anti as they could be. Both had reviewed It’ll End In Tears favourably, with Melody Maker unreservedly behind Ivo’s vision. Now, though finding five tracks to recommend, Melody Maker called the album, ‘dull, lifeless, profoundly uninteresting … mannered hymns of hollow sorrow’, as if doubting Ivo and John Fryer’s ability to authentically feel pain.

  Sounds had called Dominic Appleton’s vocal, ‘haunting … chanting such sweet sorrow’. NME called him, ‘posturing’. Underneath the headline ‘Coma Lilt or Shit (anag.)’, NME suggested, ‘If Cocteau Twins rule this amorphous hinterland, then This Mortal Coil are the court jesters … TMC are an idea that mutated into a monster.’ The comment, ‘I heard the ghost dance of dinosaurs; a music that reeks of old muso values’, would have particularly appealed to Robin Guthrie.

  NME’s sentiment pinpointed exactly why Filigree & Shadow created such antipathy. Nineteen eighty-five was clearly too soon for this return to yesteryear, to the values of progressive rock (musicianship, production, double albums), the devotion to music of the past, made by those ‘earnest, bearded’ types that had so offended Robin Guthrie (whose beard today is worthy of Old Father Time). Ivo had made it much harder to embrace by unleashing something so particular, detailed and singularly immersive on a scale of 74 minutes, but there was no A&R man to hold him back, so This Mortal Coil was judged as a folly to one man’s self-indulgence.

  The title of the first album was indeed prophetic. Deborah Edgely recalls Ivo scanning both reviews, ‘and bursting into tears’.

  Ivo: ‘I virtually stopped reading the music press after they tore into the album. But if you’re going to read the good, you have to accept the bad. But it still really hurt. I’m still immensely proud of that record.’

  At the time, Ivo typically saw music and its emotional force as the only criteria, telling Melody Maker, with admirable prescience, ‘I like the idea that the records we release aren’t just for the moment, but will sound valuable in ten years. And I think the groups on 4AD share this aim.’

  As Bauhaus well knew, vindictive reviews didn’t harm sales, and reaching number 2 in the UK independent charts with Filigree & Shadow would have been some consolation. Antony Hegarty says he wore out his cassette version, and for those that hadn’t yet discovered It’ll End In Tears, Filigree & Shadow was another vital lifeline.

  One such devotee was John Mark Lapham, who, born and raised in Abilene, Texas (once voted America’s second most conservative town), would in the Noughties form Anglo-American folk-tronic quartet The Earlies and the TMC-influenced 4AD signing The Late Cord. ‘A friend said, “You have to hear this”, and he stuck in a cassette and played Colourbox’s “Tarantula”. I felt speechless, just bowled over,’ Lapham explains. ‘I must have played Filigree & Shadow almost every night during my teenage years, and even in my twenties, I was listening to it regularly. I’ve since grown to love It’ll End In Tears more but you can never erase that early connection.’

  Of course, if there had to be one dissenting voice beside factions of the music press, it would be a Cocteau Twin, bothered by the financial aspect of the This Mortal Coil arrangement.

  From Ivo’s perspective, ‘Simon was one of the sweetest people I’d ever met, but then he started to develop a similar attitude to Robin, which was less fun. John Fryer’s working title for “Ivy & Neat” was “Moody Simon”.’

  Perhaps if Raymonde had spoken his mind at the time, Ivo might have understood the cause. ‘Much good came out of This Mortal Coil, and creatively, I had a great time on those This Mortal Coil albums,’ Raymonde says. ‘But the effect it had on our relationships – mine and Ivo’s, and Robin, Liz and Ivo’s – all of the good we had going with him, were damaged by how it panned out. It’s only when I look back and I wonder why I didn’t say, am I not getting paid? Not even for me to get home at night?

  ‘I don’t know how Ivo remembers it, but I did a fuck of a lot of work on Filigree & Shadow, which I loved doing. But if it was me, I’d have said, “Here’s a grand”. I was doing it out of love for Ivo, but when you think of the money going through This Mortal Coil’s coffers … did Howard Devoto not get anything? Did he put in as much effort as me? I came to the conclusion that I should be more cynical about our relationship. That maybe Ivo wasn’t as cool a bloke as I thought he was.’

  Ivo claims that Raymonde, like every This Mortal Coil contributor, was paid a session fee for each track that they contributed to. Had Robin Guthrie’s grievances rubbed off on Raymonde? It’s interesting to note that only Cocteau Twins had such grumbles over This Mortal Coil; maybe as the closest members of the 4AD ‘family’, Ivo had begun to take them for granted.

  Ivo: ‘Simon created the template for so many of the cover versions, and contributed a couple of gorgeous instrumentals to those first records. Like Jon Turner, he wasn’t remotely precious about how his work was used or ended up sounding. He really was as happy with how we worked together as I was. Take “Kangaroo”. It was an almost impossible song to cover, yet he extracted the heart of the thing, sticking to the brief of bass guitar and cello, creating the ideal backdrop for Gordon [Sharp] to float over. He was brilliant every step of the way. I’m amazed he didn’t get more frustrated with my vagueness.’

  Ivo says he is sure Raymonde was paid. ‘Maybe it wasn’t enough. Maybe I should’ve paid everyone royalties. But at no point did I try and pay people as little as possible in order to maximise 4AD, and ultimately my own, income. Money has never been a motivating factor in my life and, frankly, anyone who suggests othe
rwise doesn’t know me at all. Peculiarly, and beautifully, it has been my experience in business that if I ever did make a decision that I thought might work out financially, it was a guaranteed failure, whereas everything that we did that really was from the heart seemed to do really well.’

  ‘If Ivo says I was paid, that’s good enough for me,’ Raymonde responds. ‘Though I don’t recall and I don’t tend to be upset about things for no reason. But it doesn’t dwarf the good memories or the pride I have in that work.’

  Yet Raymonde also expresses the same feeling as Guthrie of feeling Cocteau Twins were taken for granted. ‘Our success seemed to pave the way for other bands to be signed and have money spent on them,’ Raymonde contends. ‘That was fine, but it never felt like we were rewarded for the success we brought. We were selling hundreds of thousands of records. For example, I know Treasure sold a hundred thousand really quickly. I run a label [Bella Union] now and I know how much money is generated by selling that amount. And we recouped on every record. Garlands cost about £900 to make! But we were always busy and never checking our bank account.’

  From unofficial 4AD figures discovered in the vault dating to March 1985, Treasure had sold 85,000 copies, though Cocteau Twins had sold a total of 463,000, with ‘Pearly-Dewdrop’s Drops’ selling 100,000. (Garlands had sold 45,000 and Head Over Heels 76,000.) ‘Song To The Siren’ had sold 90,000, and It’ll End In Tears, 63,000. These sales far outstretched any other bands – for example, Birthday Party albums sold 25–30,000 copies, Xmal Deutschland’s Fetisch, 23,000, the first Dead Can Dance album sold 15,000 and The Wolfgang Press’s Burden Of Mules not even 5,000.

  The underlying point that Raymonde, and Guthrie, were making was that Ivo couldn’t just have had a purely musical agenda: 4AD was a business as well, sustainable only through making a profit. Guthrie’s view, whether deeply cynical or simply realistic, was that ‘Ivo and Martin Mills had sewn everything up and were making a shitload of money, exploiting bands because there was a premium to being on 4AD, so the deals were shit,’ he claims. ‘What pissed me off even more was that they hid behind the art of the whole thing. It was business. Martin stayed very much in the background – we knew and respected him, and we were a bit scared of him too. His agenda was ruthless.’