The third and final album by
This Mortal Coil, 1991's
Blood is neither as unfocused as
Filigree & Shadow or as conceptually pure as It'll End in Tears, but it's a solidly enjoyable set. Once again, nearly half the tracks are instrumentals (or tracks with minimal and often wordless female vocals) written by
Ivo Watts-Russell and
John Fryer, but this batch of tunes holds together much better than the much more amorphous originals on
Filigree & Shadow; lengthy atmospheric explorations like "Dreams Are Like Water" sound composed and thoughtful rather than merely pretty. And as always, the covers are brilliantly chosen. The twin highlights are two songs written by
Big Star's
Chris Bell; "I Am the Cosmos" is reinterpreted as a ragged, brink-of-chaos rocker that sounds like it could have been on
Big Star's post-
Bell magnum opus, Third, while a delicate acoustic version of "You and Your Sister" with wispy, unsure vocals by
Kim Deal and
Tanya Donelly ranks with the first album's reinterpretation of
Tim Buckley's "Song to the Siren" as one of the group's masterpieces. Other gems include a near-symphonic reading of
Spirit's "Nature's Way" and a version of
Syd Barrett's "Late Night" that strips the song down to not much more than
Caroline Crawley's voice and a low-frequency hum. ~ Stewart Mason