In The Cold Light Of Mourning

Earlier this month, The The released the original edit of the video for Love Is Stronger Than Death, originally a single from 1993's album Dusk.

 

Filmed in New Orleans and directed by longtime collaborator Tim Pope, it's a straight forward performance, just Matt and an acoustic guitar on a veranda, cutting from long shots to extreme close ups, crisp focus to over saturated monochrome. In short, a video that lets the lyrics tell the story. Which makes perfect sense, as the song was written by Matt following the death of his younger brother Eugene. 

However, this is not the version that was commercially released, which I saw for the first time when I bought The The's film From Dusk 'Til Dawn on VHS in the late 1990s. The promo accompanying the release of the original edit reveals that a charity had approached Epic, The The's record label, who in turn approached Matt.

The charity wanted to use the song and video for a specific cause and Epic proposed re-editing the video to reframe it for this purpose. Matt was sympathetic to the request, but did not approve the re-edit as Love Is Stronger Than Death was written solely for his late brother. Despite this, the record company went ahead anyway. 

 

It's interesting going back to the version that's been more widely available for the past thirty-odd years, racking up 1.3 million YouTube views in last 14 years alone. The video is heavily interspersed with static and moving shots of random people: families, children, couples. 

 

There are a few extremely on-the-nose visualisations too: the lyric "tears may blind the eyes" accompanied by a splash in a pool of water; a doctor with a stethoscope checking an emaciated black man on a gurney; a man sitting on a park bench fading away to hammer home the point that this is about loss. Matt himself is pretty much a cameo in his own video, some of the brief cuts not even lip synching to the singing.

I think Love Is Stronger Than Death is one of the most beautiful songs Matt has ever written and recorded, so I found the video an uncharacteristic misstep, distracting from rather than focusing attention on the music and its meaning. Not a great surprise to learn after all these years that this wasn't the video originally created and approved by Tim and Matt. 

 

I'm glad that the unadorned version has finally seen the light of day and will take it's place as the definitive video from now on. Sometimes less is more.

 

Speaking of which, The The also delivered a beautifully understated performance of Love Is Stronger Than Death on Later...With Jools Holland in 1993.

 

In 2017, The The released the 3CD Radio Cinéola Trilogy, a whopping 120-track collection comprising three 'broadcasts': The End Of The Day, The Inertia Variations and Midnight To Midnight.

The End Of The Day includes the then-new The The song We Can't Stop What's Coming but is otherwise comprised of cover versions of Matt's songs. Some were intended for The The's aborted "Interpretations" series of EPs in 2000 (only the first - ShrunkenMan - saw the light of day), others were recorded in subsequent years, several exclusively for this release. 

Tom Bright recorded a version of Love Is Stronger Than Death, backed by Ian Berryman (keyboards), James Eller (bass) and Chris Whitten (drums), who all perform on We Can't Stop What's Coming, suggesting that both songs may have been recorded around the same time. Reading about Tom's start in life, you can understand why he may have felt a particular connection to this song.

A year earlier, Tel Aviv-based duo Shadow Ensemble recorded a cover of Love Is Stronger Than Death as the opening track on their debut EP, Out Of The Darkness. Shadow Ensemble is ostensibly a personal project for musician Oren Gilad, initially working with Tali Magory, a scientist by profession who has also released music as, you guessed it, The Scientist. Not to be confused with the OG Scientist, of course.

It's interesting to hear a female vocal and it's a sympathetic version, although it's polished production lacks the grit and emotional heft of Tom's version. And neither of course can ever be anything other than a homage to The The's superlative original.

 

 

Love Is Stronger Than Death 

Love, love, love

Love, love, love

 

Me and my friend were walking
In the cold light of mourning
Tears may blind the eyes 

but the soul is not deceived
In this world even winter ain't what it seems

 

Here come the blue skies 

Here comes springtime
When the rivers run high and the tears run dry
When everything that dies
Shall rise

 

Love, love, love

Is stronger than death

Love, love, love

Is stronger than death

 

In our lives we hunger for those we cannot touch
All the thoughts unuttered

And all the feelings unexpressed
Play upon our hearts like the mist upon our breath

 
But, awoken by grief, our spirits speak
"How could you believe that the life within the seed
that grew arms that reached
And a heart that beat
And lips that smiled
And eyes that cried
Could ever die?"

 

Here come the blue skies 

Here comes springtime
When the rivers run high and the tears run dry
When everything that dies
Shall rise

 

Love, love, love

Is stronger than death

Love, love, love

Is stronger than death

 

Shall rise

Shall rise
Shall rise

Shall rise