There are certain songs that can transcend generations, that can evolve through new voices and deliver themselves to a new and different audience. This Mortal Coil’s debut album ‘It’ll End in Tears’ delivered on this premise in 1984 with the quintessential cover of Tim Buckley’s ‘Song to the Siren’. The song featured Robin Guthrie and Elizabeth Fraser (Cocteau Twins) and without knowing it, it became its own siren song to a generation. Too young on its release I would later meet this musical spell in the early 90s.
The haunting voice of Elizabeth would carry many a goth straight to the heavens. A song which in its simplest form was already a song of heartache but TMC’s cover would bring many layers of aching and melancholy to a new generation and signifying a beginning of a new musical era; that of post-punk and gothic rock. The song lured you into a dream-like haunting dark ballad which seemed fraught with doom, gloom and broken heartedness. Something so beautiful and painful all at once and something it seemed so impossible to hear only once. I found myself constantly playing the song on repeat and staring into nowhere in a trance somehow here but lost. I guess this is what depression sounds like? This is one song that will stop any party in its tracks and reduce a room to quivering lips and welled-up tears. I had found a sound and a voice in that song that perfectly personified everything I was feeling and I think the true melancholy ache of a whole generation of goths and future goths.
Song to the Siren was the song that sang me to sleep and soothed my tears and sadness through a crazy period and put words and emotion to something I had felt but couldn’t articulate. I was having a mental breakdown and when I heard this song whilst so sad it meant something so positive to me. The transformative nature of music really cannot be denied. Whenever I feel lost or alone, I turn to this song again for comfort and I sail away with it in mind and for those moments I feel escape.
