Filigree & Shadow is the second album released by This Mortal Coil on 20 SEP 1986.
This was the second studio album from the 4AD collective brought together by label boss Ivo Watts-Russell. Ivo had spent nearly two years putting the album together and by the time he’d finished he’d amassed a huge body of music: 25 tracks including 13 instrumentals, enough material for a double album.
Named after a track from Ivo’s favourite band Fever Tree, FILIGREE & SHADOW had a dreamlike quality, immersive and ethereal, but was greeted with mixed reviews by the press.
Whereas Sounds gave the album five stars saying “'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,” NME were scathing, “dull, lifeless, profoundly uninteresting ... mannered hymns of hollow sorrow'.
No matter the reviews, the album represented a considerable achievement for both the artists featured and for a label boss far more used to signing outfits than producing them. However, the negative press deeply upset him.
“I virtually stopped reading the music press after they tore into the album,” said Ivo. “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.'
However, for every critic there were others who couldn’t praise the album highly enough.
'I must have played Filigree & Shadow almost every night during my teenage years, and even in my twenties,” said John Lapham from 4AD outfit The Late Cord, “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.”
"Billy, Billy, we just had a baby"
In my life the piano sings
Brings me words that are not the strength of strings.
Fiery rain and Ruby's cooling sun.
Now I see that my world has only begun.
Notes that roll on winds with swirling wings...
Brings me words that are not the strength of strings.