In the wake of the Smiths' pining romanticism, the Cocteau Twin's gauzy ethereality, and Sarah Records' pastel preciousness emerged a fertile garden of melodically lush, faintly melancholy, and faintingly beautiful (predominantly British) artists in the late 80s and early 90s. One of the most striking of these artists was the neo-Romantic, pre-Raphaelite duo, Shelleyan Orphan. Eschewing synthesizers (and, frankly, most electric and electronic instrumentation), Shelleyan Orphan wove finely wrought strings with equally intricately braided vocals. Those vocals, particularly Ms. Crowley's ringleted, lightly trilling soprano, ornamented with light trills and filigree, could not have possibly been more perfectly suited for incanting the group's music if Dante Gabriel Rosetti had painted them himself.
Ms. Crawley passed this day. Here is the song that first stopped my heart with her voice: the cover of reclusive Canadian songstress, Mary Margaret O'Hara's, "Let Me Lift You Up," as performed by the seminal Goth-Romantic-Ambient label, 4AD's, iconic standard-bearer, This Mortal Coil, from which Ms. Crawley has just shuffled off....