One week at number one on w/e 5th November 1983
Buckley’s version on “Starsailor”, however, complete with the heat haze of reverb-heavy guitar and his sonorous voice, finally saw the track becoming the kind of cult classic eventually taped on to endless cream coloured TDK cassettes and swapped between friends in the know.
Its visibility was starting to wane by the early eighties, at which point 4AD entered the fray. This Mortal Coil were a label project rather than a proper band, an excuse for 4AD’s owner Ivo Watts-Russell to build his own troupe using a talent pool of all the different voices on the label. A world apart from Pat Boone’s version, “Song To The Siren” is, in the hands of Watts-Russell, Liz Fraser and Robin Guthrie, suddenly something arctic, unhurried, debagged of Buckley’s weighty, elaborate vocal bulk. It breathes slowly, embraces absolute silence where emptiness has the greatest impact, and is unafraid of the cold and dark – Fraser’s performance is exquisite, broken but confident, always leaving the impression that she could push harder and go further, without her being tempted to actually do that. Just when you then think you’re close to reaching her, the song stops abruptly, messing with the fabric of time as it does so; you think you’ve been listening for a mere minute-and-a-half, but it’s clearly been playing for over twice as long.
The phrase “effortless sounding” is bandied around a lot by critics to describe all manner of tracks, from catchy two minute punk-pop wonders to improv jazz, and is usually pulled out when they can’t quite do their job and define what it is about the damn thing that works. The fact that I’ve apologised for reaching for that phrase doesn’t make the use of it any more excusable; but explaining why I find this version to be more effective than any of the many that have followed it since (from people as varied as George Michael, Bryan Ferry, Robert Plant, The The, Sinead O’Connor, Garbage and even Half Man Half Biscuit) almost feels like an act of science, like trying to dissect the emotional impact of one voice and its accompanying half-asleep guitar with a stopwatch and notebook.
The best conclusion I’ve ever managed to draw is that in this instance, “Song To The Siren” succeeds because of what it doesn’t do. In the same manner that a performer in a jazz or folk club taking the stage to do an impromptu open-mic performance can sometimes be the best live performance you’ve heard all year, it realises that laying the track bare, giving it an unfussy space and letting Liz Fraser gently embody its essence is the best bet – she knows exactly where to take it, precisely when less is more (which is interesting, given that some of her performances can be as showy and dazzling in their own eccentric way as Buckley’s) and her instinct aligns with the listener’s emotions. In her hands, this song sounds as ancient as the Greek myths Buckley was embracing, as if you first heard it forty lifetimes ago. The subtle, cold 4AD production just adds to the impression of a song trapped and frozen between two worlds, the ancient and the modern; no wonder David Lynch became so obsessed with it.
While it only entered into the lower reaches of the national Top 75 – which you may rightly deem to be unjust, but it was hardly likely to ever be played on Steve Wright In The Afternoon – “Song To The Siren” hovered around the NME Indie Charts for 54 weeks, keeping “Blue Monday” endless company.