...Smiles Ok

構成数 : 1枚
合計収録時間 : 00:42:06
The Hope Blister: Louise Rutkowski (vocals); Chris Tombling, Leo Payne (violin); Sue Dench (viola); Audrey Riley (cello); Ritchie Thomas (saxophone, drums); Laurence O'Keefe (bass). Additional personnel: Sheena Bizarre (spoken vocals); Louise Lawrence, Dmitri Williams, Astrid Williamson (background vocals). Recorded at Protocol, London, England. Years after 1991's BLOOD, the final installment in a trilogy of albums by 4AD label head Ivo Watts-Russell's This Mortal Coil project, comes the Hope Blister. TMC's revolving cast evolved from a label showcase into a parade of non-affiliated guests. SMILE'S OK represents the next step, picking up the familiar TMC thread of covers sketched with electronics, feather-light strings, and bel canto voices, while reducing TMC's bevy of songbirds to a solitary veteran sparrow--Louise Rutkowski. Otherwise, Watts-Russell's musical vision and inscrutably personal selection of covers--including songs by Slowdive, Heidi Berry, Chris Knox, Cranes, GusGus, David Sylvian, Brian Eno, and John Cale--remain as singular as ever. SMILE'S OK's palette relies heavily upon daguerreotype synth coloring, a whisper that filters through the hazy orchestrations. Like laudanum or absinthe, Rutkowski's powerful, unique voice grows more intoxicating with each track. The vocal variety of TMC's circus of sirens is missed, but Watts-Russell compensates by tuning Rutkowski to the individual moods of these songs with subtle effect. Among the revelations are Knox's "The Outer Skin," cradled in an impossibly ethereal arrangement very different from the Tall Dwarfs's low-fi milieu, the rapturous climactic dissonance of Eno's "Spider And I," and a lovely sax-and-guitar arrangement of Cranes's "Sweet Unknown."