On the surface, this isn’t as essential a release as other BBC John Peelsessions LPs. Because the Cocteau Twins used drum machines, the backing tracks and the rhythms replicate the known versions much more than other bands forced to record live in the studio. Yet these BBC John Peel Sessions is still a whopper of a treat for fans and the uninitiated, A sound that builds and builds until one is overcome with unspeakable, barely understood emotions as Elizabeth Fraser starts to blossom into one of the most riveting voices to ever blow air into a mic.
The original members were Elizabeth Fraser (vocals), Robin Guthrie (guitar, drum machine) and Will Heggie (bass guitar), who was replaced by Simon Raymonde (also bass guitar) early in the band’s career.
These BBC Sessions were released as an an album of BBC studio recordings by the band The Cocteau Twins released in 1999 by Bella Union in the UK and Rykodisc in the US. The album spanned the band’s career from the early 1980s through the 1990s. Taken from a series of early 1980s Peel sessions. Throughout most of the Eighties, Peel made favourable comments on the band in interviews.
The band were discovered by Peel when they sent demo tapes to him and the 4AD label. After hearing the demo, Peel invited the group to do a session for his show in 1982. The 4AD label heard the track and signed them. Peel would play their songs throughout most of the Eighties, although by the time the band released their 1988 ‘Blue Bell Knoll’ album, his interest appeared to have waned. At the end of 1988, Peel’s listeners voted their track ‘Carolyn Fingers’ in the 1988 Festive Fifty, despite the DJ not playing any tracks from the album throughout the year.
John Peel Session, 15th July 1982
“Alas Dies Laughing” – 3:29
“Feathers-Oar-Blades” – 2:19
“Garlands” – 4:19
“Wax and Wane” – 3:50
“Strange Fruit” (Billie Holiday cover written by Abel Meeropol) – 1:52
“From the Flagstones” – 3:
“The Tinderbox (Of A Heart)” – 4:46
“Hitherto” – 3:57
In 1984 Peel included ‘From The Flagstones’ by the Cocteaus in his selections for “My Top Ten” and discussed the band with Andy Peebles. Cocteau Twins – From the Flagstones .Well, this is my favourite record of last year. And they were one of those bands again, like when I first heard them I thought, “Great, I’m glad I lived long enough to hear this.” My favourite record of last year, The Cocteau Twins and From The Flagstones. It’s a very, very pleasant voice actually. I like listening to that. Well, I like the extreme voices. I was just thinking that. Over the years it has always been people who have got the really idiosyncratic voices that I like Beefheart, Marc Bolan, Rod Stewart, Elizabeth Frazer of the Cocteaus, Mark Smith of The Fall people like them.
Cocteau Twins were formed by Robin Guthrie and Will Heggie in 1979, with Elizabeth Fraser joining after Guthrie had spotted her dancing at a local nightclub. Their name isn’t a reference to French artist and author Jean Cocteau. Instead, it’s taken from a song called “Cocteau Twins” by Johnny and the Self Abusers (aka Simple Minds). Their early music was very much of its time; debut album “Garlands” (re-released in March 2020) is moody post-punk with a clear influence of bands like The Birthday Party, Bauhaus and Siouxsie and the Banshees. Cocteau Twins wouldn’t hit upon their trademark sound of shimmering guitars and ethereal vocals until their sophomore LP “Head Over Heels” in 1983.
As Fraser and Guthrie entered into a romantic relationship, they honed their sound throughout the 80s before achieving a degree of mainstream success with 1988’s Blue Bell Knoll and its lead single “Carolyn’s Fingers”.
For almost a decade, the relationship between 4AD Records and the Cocteau Twins was so intertwined that it’s still hard not to think of one without the other rearing its immaculate head. The Birthday Party – whose number one fans were the Cocteaus, which drew them to 4AD in the first place – were the first band to truly put the label on the map, but it was the Cocteaus’ presence that changed the label’s direction and aesthetic. The trio was emblematic of the label’s mid-Eighties period in which the music press would refer to a “4AD sound”, a beautiful, dark, insular style that was perfectly matched by an equally inventive and meticulously presented vision across all of the artwork. But if the Cocteaus (unwillingly) defined “dream-pop” before the description even existed, the two re-mastered vinyl editions of “Blue Bell Knoll” (1988) and “Heaven Or Las Vegas” (1990) are inarguable proof that their music – as unique, revered and influential to this day – cannot be contained by such a category.
Befitting the closeness of their relationship, both band and label were experiencing shifts at the same time, not so much changing their identity as refining it and adapting to the times. Three years earlier, the Cocteaus had been at the receiving end of adulation and Top 30 chart entries after the release of their third album “Treasure”, which was soon followed by their first US release, the compilation “The Pink Opaque”. It was 4AD’s first US licensing deal too, and with stronger ties Stateside, in 1986 the label had signed its first US band, Throwing Muses. The East Coast band happened to be pals with a neighbouring bunch, named Pixies, who weren’t only to accelerate 4AD’s fortunes but all of independent music culture on both sides of the Atlantic.
As Pixies’ 4AD debut “Come On Pilgrim” appeared in 1987, Cocteau Twins singer Elizabeth Fraser, guitarist Robin Guthrie and bassist Simon Raymonde were taking time off; that year, they only released one track (‘Crushed’ for 4AD’s first label compilation “Lonely Is An Eyesore”). Seeking greater independence, the band had the funds to build their first home studio, a 24-track operation housed in a warehouse in West London, by all accounts a grotty run-down building but a huge step up for their operations. “Any money we got, we spent on equipment, never on ourselves, so we could make better records,” recalls bassist Simon Raymonde.
It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand what Elizabeth Fraser is singing. Rather than being an accidental quirk, the ambiguity of her lyrics is the result of a considered artistic decision.
With Raymonde, the band released a series of critically acclaimed albums and EPs that explored their new style. These included “The Spangle Maker” (1984), “Treasure (Cocteau Twins album)” “Aikea-Guinea” (1985),“Tiny Dynamine” (1985), “Echoes in a Shallow Bay” (1985), and “Love’s Easy Tears” (1986). Raymonde, who was called in to work on the second album by This Mortal Coil, did not participate in the recording of the fourth Cocteau Twins LP, “Victorialand” (1986), a predominantly acoustic record which featured only Guthrie and Fraser.Raymonde returned to the group for “The Moon and the Melodies”(1986), a collaboration with composer Harold Budd which was not released under the Cocteau Twins name.
In 1985 4AD signed an agreement with Relativity Records for distribution of Cocteau Twins releases in the US and other territories. To commemorate the event, the compilation “The Pink Opaque” (1985) was released as a way of introducing the new, broader audience to the band’s back catalogue.
Freed from watching the clock while recording, the only limitations the band had were their own exacting standards. A long and experimental session followed, testing out new equipment and effects, which produced the Cocteaus‘ first full band album in almost four years (in 1986, “Victorialand” was recorded by Guthrie and Fraser alone while “The Moon And The Melodies” was a band collaboration with ambient pianist Harold Budd). Fraser named the album “Blue Bell Knoll” after a peak in southern Utah, on the highest plateau (The Aquarius) in North America. The record was indeed an exquisite, elevated place to hang out. For all the band’s experimentation, what emerged was their most pop-centric record yet – only one track went over four minutes, the thumping drums and sonic force of “Treasure” were assigned to the past, unveiling a new Cocteau Twins – still an elemental force but more relaxed, subtle, grown up.
Whether it was down to owning their own studio and the ability to unwind, or the music was cut to fit Fraser’s own shift toward a sweeter, higher register, or it was simply the trio’s need to progress, the change was evident from the first few notes of the opening title track, where a harpsichord (or synth equivalent) sat behind Fraser’s serene glossolalia, a lattice of tiny details over 140 seconds that suddenly unfolded into a hair-raising burst of colour. The enchanting mood was spun out over the whole album, bound up in its elaborate titles, one after the other – ‘A Kissed Out Red Floatboat’, ‘The Itchy Glowbo Blow’, ‘Spooning Good Singing Gum’ and, best of all saved till the end, ‘Ella Megalast Burls Forever’.
Guthrie, who’d had reservations over Treasure as he felt the band had not adapted quickly enough in the studio to having Raymonde on board (he’d joined in late 1983), was much happier this time. “Blue Bell Knoll,” the guitarist feels, “is where things finally gelled with Simon.” The bassist puts this down to his contributions on piano, “and being more confident in the band, because I’d been around longer.”
4AD founder Ivo Watts-Russell, who had signed the band when they were nervous novices from Grangemouth in Scotland and seen them blossom with most every record, also saw a marked change in Fraser. “It’s got her best singing since she discovered her higher range,” he asserts. “‘Carolyn’s Fingers’ is absolutely beautiful, and still gives me the shivers.”
Grangemouth, was one of the ugliest places in the world. Home to an oil refinery that looks like a far Eastern mega-city shrunk down to miniature size, with constantly burning fires and clouds of steam that look like dark, sulphurous smoke, it’s a vision of hell. I’ve always found it incredible a band as beautiful as Cocteau Twins came from somewhere so unpleasant. But perhaps there’s no contradiction at all.
Despite it being lauded as one of the very best at the time, Fraser was insecure about her voice and had sought out lessons, where she’d learnt more about breathing and, as a result, shifted toward a higher, sweeter sphere. This had started on post-Treasure EPs such as “Aikea-Guinea” and “Echoes In A Shallow Bay”, but it was “Blue Bell Knoll” where her new true self came into its own.
‘Carolyn’s Fingers’ had got its name from the album’s chosen artwork, a photograph by a then-unknown Juergen Teller of, yes, fingers belonging to a woman named Carolyn (one of the band’s friends). It was chosen as the lead single from the album, but curiously only in America via their new US label Capitol. Though they disliked the format, a promo video was filmed, zooming in on Fraser’s bird-like demeanour, head bobbing and eyes darting, looking anywhere except into the camera, miming as best she could to her trills and swoops as Guthrie’s guitar glided around her plumage.
It was followed by another lift from the album, ‘Cico Buff’, one the dreamiest concoctions the Cocteaus had ever created, but again only in America, and this time only as a promotional single for radio. ‘Suckling The Mender’ and ‘Spooning Good Singing Gum’ were similarly a reflection of the new serene Cocteaus sound, while ‘For Phoebe Still A Baby’ resembled a slow lullaby, which could have been a premonition for Fraser and Guthrie’s future child, as the singer fell pregnant after “Blue Bell Knoll” was released. It’s fanciful to imagine the intimacy and romance between the couple found its way into the music, but in retrospect, it makes a lot of sense
Blue Bell Knoll entered the UK chart at number 14 but wasn’t pushed hard by label or band. In line with the lack of officially released singles, the Cocteaus chose not to tour the album, despite the commercial potential. “We just weren’t in the mood,” Raymonde told Volume magazine at the time. “I still think it stands out as a good album, but I don’t think you need to promote everything you do. I suppose we’ve been lucky, in the respect that up till now our record sales haven’t fallen off when we haven’t toured or put singles out or done all that kind of thing.”
The band subsequently turned inward and accelerated through more changes. Raymonde got married (and became a father himself in 1991), and as Fraser and Guthrie’s daughter Lucy-Belle was born in September, 1989, the band moved its studio from the warehouse in Acton to leasing the first floor (and later, the whole studio) of a beautiful building owned by The Who’s PeteTownshend, overlooking the Thames by Richmond Lock. “It was like a rock star’s paradise, with a thousand-square-foot balcony,”Raymonde recalls. “The only problem was that it was seriously expensive. But we justified that by reckoning that we’d have paid the same with album advances if we were to use another studio.”
Townshend had named the studio Eel Pie after the nearby islet that could be seen from the balcony, though the Cocteaus re-christened it September Sound, after the month in which Lucy-Belle was born. It was a timely arrival. Anyone who knew the trio’s personalities behind the band knew there were tensions within the band, especially as Fraser and Guthrie were a couple. But in these new plush surrounds, a new album had been started, whose sound was surely influenced by the joy and release felt by the couple at starting a family.
But Raymonde recalls that it wasn’t all sweetness and light given Guthrie’s continuing cocaine dependency and mood swings. Fraser was to name the next album Heaven Or Las Vegas, a suggestion of truth versus artifice, of music versus commerce, or perhaps a gamble, one last throw of the dice. “It was a great, very symbolic title,” Guthrie thinks.
Raymonde: “My dad had passed away very soon after Lucy was born: I wrote the piano part to ‘Frou-Frou Foxes In Midsummer Fires’ the day after he died, so writing songs about birth, and also death, gave the record a darker side that I hear in songs like ‘Cherry Coloured Funk’ and ‘Fotzepolitic’. It was an inspirational time to be in the studio, and an absolute joy to make that album, but Robin deteriorated afterwards. Of course, we never talked about it.”
Heaven Or Las Vegas was preceded by the album’s clearest-cut uptempo moment, ‘Iceblink Luck’, before the album released in September 1990, a year after Lucy-Belle’s arrival. Guthrie says he personally prefers Head Over Heels and Victorialand, “for emotional reasons,” but he knows why fan forums consider Heaven Or Las Vegas is Cocteau Twins‘ finest hour. “I was showing off, to people who’d written us off as some unintelligible, ethereal and weird art rock,” he ventures. “And it was evolution. A lot fell into place, like our relationship with Simon had matured, and we’d got better at recording. I know drugs made it slower to make, but Heaven Or Las Vegas was made despite the drugs.”
It seems impossible that an album as magical and timeless as Heaven Or Las Vegas managed to transcend all the strife, because Heaven Or Las Vegas is arguably the greatest Cocteau Twins record of them all. Guthrie feels that, as his personal life got darker, the music got lighter, and there is a warmth, levity and surefooted melodic depth that not even Blue Bell Knoll achieved.
After the irresistible gliding momentum of the opening ‘Cherry-Coloured Funk’ came ‘Pitch The Baby’, as funky (and yet far from any gratuitously curtailing to an idea of Cocteaus-go-dance-music) as the band ever got, before the unfettered joy of ‘Iceblink Luck’. Yet side two of the original vinyl is even stronger, from ‘I Wear Your Ring’ through two of the very best Cocteaus songs ‘Fotzepolitic’ and ‘Road, River And Rail’ to the euphoric finale, which lives up to its title of ‘Frou Frou Foxes In the Midsummer Fires’.
Fraser’s luscious, dreamy hooks even came with odd articulated words and sentences, in recognised English – it was as if a baby had freed her from her self-imposed interior prison of what resembled a baby language. She reputedly recorded many of the songs for Heaven Or Las Vegas while holding Lucy-Belle in her arms. Eagle-eared listeners could catch telling clues: “Mother’s daughter” in ‘Road River And Rail’, “You, yourself and your father… thank you for mending me, baby” in ‘Iceblink Luck, “I only want to love you” in ‘Pitch The Baby’, “infant’s breast” in ‘Frou-Frou Foxes In Midsummer Fires’, “My Baby’s cries” in ‘Wolf In The Breast’. On record anyway, Cocteau Twins was united, even healed, by the experience.
Not only is Heaven Or Las Vegas Ivo’s favourite Cocteaus album, but his all-time 4AD album – “by a long shot,” he says. “It’s a perfect record.” And yet what deeply etched and conflicted memories come attached with it, since it proved to the last Cocteaus album on 4AD Recvords. Just two months after the album was released, Ivo decided to let them go, one of the most painful decisions of his life, but the tensions behind the scenes that has grown over the years – a battle of personalities, insecurities and business decisions, clouded by the presence of drugs – has caused irreparable damage to the relationship that had once sustained them all. The business of music had overshadowed the music itself, and there was to be no more rolls of the dice. At least it left the alchemy created by 4AD and Cocteau Twins at a heavenly peak, and how rare that that happens six albums (and as many EPs) into a band’s life.
After three albums, all of which were well received (with Fraser being described by one overly-keen critic as “The Voice of God”), they disbanded in 1997, owing in large part to the breakdown of Guthrie and Fraser’s relationship. It was not an amicable split: as recently as 2005, Fraser pulled out of a planned reunion at Coachella festival, which would have earned them £1.5 million each, because she not could bear to share a stage with her former lover.
Following the break-up of the band, Fraser provided vocals for a number of tracks on Massive Attack’s album Mezzanine, including hit single “Teardrop” (has any other artist contributed more to the “good songs to listen to after a heavy night”). Meanwhile Robin Guthrie took the blueprint of the Cocteau Twins in ever more experimental directions, releasing a number of instrumental albums as well as writing music for films. His score for Mysterious Skin, which he worked with American composer and former Cocteau Twins collaborator Harold Budd, is both gorgeous and sad.
Cocteau Twins recorded two more albums (for Fontana) before calling it a day, both of which followed in the creative slipstream of their last two 4AD albums though without reaching the same landmark level. Now that the vinyl format has been reborn, It’s time that Blue Bell Knoll and Heaven Or Las Vegas benefit from the high-definition quality of remastering, and can once again be available with the best sound available, and with all their original artwork (Blue Bell Knoll’s triple-fold sleeve notwithstanding).As 4AD Records continues to make progress, prospering in a very different era than the one that spawned the Cocteaus, there is still room to recognise such priceless recordings, from a time where 4AD carved out its reputation, and artists such as current 4AD inhabitant Grimes fell in love with them, and helped bring her into the fold. 4AD and Cocteau Twins remain an ongoing relationship; first love, as they say, never dies.
They were loved by Prince, adored by Madonna yet Cocteau Twins kept a notoriously low profile. There was no political posturing, no iconoclasm or easily definable aesthetic. They had very little of what makes bands interesting, outside of the music. They’re ineffable, both musically and in terms of the personas they presented.
Fraser once mocked the attempts of music journalists to describe their music: “What I find really funny is the way they always put ‘you can’t analyse their music or describe it in words but anyway here goes: it’s a radiant ethereal dooda dooda whatever…'” As someone who googled “ethereal synonyms” while writing this piece, I can’t help but feel personally attacked.
“Garlands” (1982)
Garlands was the Cocteau Twins debut album, released in the early autumn of 1982. It was the only album they made with original bassist Will Heggie. Describing it as “haunting”, “spellbound”, “diaphanous”, and discerning a “frosting of sweetness”, the critics wore out their adjective; this was rock music – just – but it was conjured in the unlikeliest environment from the strangest of material. Their debut recording, Garlands (released by 4AD in 1982), was an instant success, Cocteau Twins‘ sound on their first three recordings relied on the combination of Heggie’s rhythmic basslines, Guthrie’s minimalist guitar melodies, and Fraser’s voice.
After signing with the British record label 4AD in 1982, the band released their debut album Garlands later that year, Cocteau Twins debut album Garlands ruins the “isn’t it wild that the Cocteau Twins came from a horrible place?” thesis by very much sounding like it was written in Grangemouth. It’s claustrophobic and discordant and the moments of transcendence are few and far between. The chorus of “Blind Dumb Deaf” offers the first flash of the yearning that characterised Cocteau Twins‘ later music but there’s still something off-kilter about it. Meanwhile, “The Hollow Men” squanders the promise of its snappy opening bassline with more plodding discordance. For me, the album feels a little oppressive. This is my subjective opinion and I have friends who consider the album among their best. But yeah, it sounds like you’ve got lost in an oil refinery and would really just like to find your way out.
The Spangle Maker EP
The addition of Raymonde in 1983 solidified their final line up, which produced The Spangle Maker EP (containing their biggest hit in their native United Kingdom, “Pearly-Dewdrops’ Drops”, For a band with a reputation for being esoteric, the Cocteau Twins have crafted some truly memorable, rousing choruses; for example, “Pearly Dewdrops’ Drops”, with its joyous refrain of ‘dizzy, dizzy, dizzy, paddy, paddy, paddy, bicycle and tulips-eh’, or something.
Lullabies EP
“Feathers Oar Lands” from follow-up EP Lullabies stands up a lot better. Is that… a riff? A muscular bass-line? Are the Cocteau Twins rocking out? Yes – and I love it. It’s perhaps the only Cocteau Twins song you could start a mosh pit to, albeit a fey, wistful one. You also hear Elizabeth Fraser sounding kind of aloof, which makes for an interesting contrast with her later, more earnest, style.
Cocteau Twins atmosphere is unmistakably present. The bass and drums are the main drivers of this atmosphere. The guitar and vocals are almost like fluttery accents, swirling in and out through the background.
In 1983, the band released a second EP, “Peppermint Pig”, the eponymous title track of an 1983 EP, also sounds surprisingly aggressive. Given how dreamy their later output is, it’s easy to forget that The Cocteau Twins emerged in a post-punk context, but here it’s really apparent. It sounds like Siouxsie and the Banshees, if that’s what you’re into.
“Head over Heels” (1983)
The band’s next full-length LP record, Head over Heels, relied solely on the latter two, following Heggie’s amicable departure after the tour that followed the release of Peppermint Pig This led to the characteristic Cocteau Twins sound: Fraser’s voice, by turns ethereal and operatic, combined with increasingly effects-heavy guitar playing by Guthrie (who has often said that he is far more interested in the way the guitar is recorded than in the actual notes being played, though he later admitted that his reliance on effects and layering was initially due to his own technical limitations). Opening track When Mother Was Moth sets the tone, with a slow drum machine drenched in improbable amounts of reverberation and Liz Frazer cooing strange nothings over the top. The effect is magical if you’re hearing it for the first time in 2009. In between this and the closing Musette and Drums is a sequence of often brilliant tunes. Some, like the single Sugar Hiccup are sedate and almost poppy, whilst the fabulously titled Glass Candle Grenades and Tinderbox of a Heart are of the more swirly and adventurous variety.
There is not one duff track on the whole LP, and it all culminates in the simply incredible Musette and Drums. A looping, dramatic guitar phrase underpins one of Liz Frazer’s strongest vocal performances on a killer melody. Robin Guthrie tops even this with a rare screaming guitar solo that sounds like nothing else I’ve ever heard before or since – barely a recognisably melodic note in it, yet full of intense drama, angst and melancholy. It still makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
Elizabeth Frazer is one of the most influential vocalists in rock history, and the band that she fronted was at the forefront of one of the many psychedelic-rock genre offshoots – ‘dream-pop’. Frazer consciously appropriated the voice as an instrumental appendage. The Cocteau Twin’s melodies are sublime which Frazer delivers by way of an ethereal and other-wordly contralto. Frazer’s ‘voice instrument’ is wrapped in layer upon layer of Robin Guthrie’s shimmering oneiric guitar and keyboard lines.
“Head Over Heels’ blends celestial singalonds, middle-eastern psalms, majestic spirituals, vibrant melismas, tinkling guitars and neo-classical keyboards. Cocteau Twins‘ songs exhibited the levity and grace of madrigals but also the gloom and pomp of requiems. The dream-pop of the Cocteau Twins shares the contemplative quality and the passion for textures with ‘shoegazing’ bands like ‘Slowdive’ and ‘My Bloody Valentine’, but diverges from this genre in terms of both narrative development and emotional intensity.
Sunburst and Snowblind (1983)
“Treasure (1984)
Taken from 1984’s Treasure LP, “Ivo” is so grand and operatic that it becomes slightly farcical, an effect not helped by the almost yodel-like backing vocals. Still: it’s great. Please forgive me but I have also included their partly terrible, partly charming cover of “Frosty the Snowman”. If nothing else, it’s a testament to the fact Cocteau Twins don’t take themselves too seriously.
I haven’t discussed the album Treasure much but it’s a lot of people’s favourite and when you listen to “Lorelei” you can understand why.; I once heard someone describe it as “what falling in love sounds like”, which is as good a description as any. There’s a deeply poignant emotional intensity to it – it would also be a great soundtrack for a heartbreak.
Aikea-Guinea (1985)
Tiny Dynamine / Echoes in a Shallow Bay (1985)
The Cocteau Twins‘ record company 4AD put this out, a pairing of two of their best mid-eighties EPs . However, in 2006 they released two double-CD sets which comprehensively collected single and EP material covering the band’s entire career from 1982 to 1996. Lullabies to Violaine volume 1 contains all of the music on this CD — in the same track order, even — plus 25 other songs recorded between 1982 and 1990.
As for the songs, well… if you’re at all interested in finding out what the Cocteau Twins were about, then you will want to hear these eight tracks one way or another. I think these two EPs mark the point where the band really began to come into their own unique musical sound — from this point on, for about five years, pretty much everything they touched turned to gold. They had clearly moved on from their early post-punk clumsiness and were really learning how to use sound in the studio. From the ambient soundscapes of ‘Pink Orange Red’ through to the tribal drum patterns and symphonic sweep of ‘Pale Clouded White’, it’s pure Cocteau Twins magic. ‘Melonella’, my favourite track, showcases Liz Fraser’s euphoric glossolalia technique like nothing else I’ve ever heard (here, she seems to be incanting in something vaguely related to Latin). Nobody else could have made this music.
“Victorialand” (1986)
Victorialand released the same year as The Moon and the Melodies, is a stripped-back affair in which Cocteau Twins‘ characteristically expansive soundscapes are often reduced to Fraser’s vocals and a single guitar line. From the former album, it’s remarkable how fresh “Why Do You Love Me” still sounds. With its wailing, siren-like feedback, it reminds me of Mica Levi’s soundtrack Under the Skin. Victorialand, was Cocteau Twins’ fourth album, was released in spring 1986. The largely acoustic, non-percussive album was made with Elizabeth and Robin, while Simon was working on This Mortal Coil’s second album. Dif Juz label mate Richard Thomas guested on tabla and saxophone. The Guardian said “It’s not quite ambient, but it’s definitely not rock’n’roll even by the Cocteaus’ standards, building on the moments of guitar shimmer from the previous years’ EPs, while also stripping back at points to where it’s nothing but a Guthrie guitar line and Fraser’s voice.”
Raymonde temporarily left the band during the recording of their fourth album, Victorialand. For the 1986 album Victorialand Fraser said, “The lyrics are words I’ve found by going through dictionaries and books in languages I don’t understand. The words don’t have any meaning at all until they’re sung.” In fact, her unique method of songwriting derived in large part from a lack of confidence in her ability to write conventionally: “Looking back, [it] was a tool to help get things out. I didn’t have the confidence just to sit down and write something. I was always running away from that.”
Victorialand, was the Cocteau Twins’ fourth album, was released in the spring of 1986. It’s largely acoustic, non-percussive album. The Guardian said “It’s not quite ambient, but it’s definitely not rock’n’roll even by the Cocteaus’ standards, building on the moments of guitar shimmer from the previous years’ EPs.
“Blue Bell Knoll” (1988)
In 1988, Cocteau Twins signed with Capitol Records in the United States, distributing their fifth album, Blue Bell Knoll, through a major label in the country. My all-time favourite Cocteau Twins song, “Carolyn’s Fingers”. In its final chorus, two different Fraser vocal lines are laid on top of each other to create one of most exquisitely yearning sounds I’ve ever heard.I defy you to watch the intense sincerity on Fraser’s face (she’s decked out in a prim Victorian gown which makes it even more endearing) and not be moved. There’s an intense vulnerability and earnestness to her performance; at times she seems to flinch from the camera, but there’s a suggestion of joy, too. “Carolyn’s Fingers” speaks to me of endurance, hope and rebirth – which is, of course, pure speculation.
The brilliance of Cocteau Twins is that they capture the lightness of dreams. Their pop sound is like they’ve dipped into your reveries and are playing them back to you. By the time Blue Bell Knoll, the Scottish band’s fifth album, came out in 1988, they had cemented this meld of glittery guitars and avian vocals, this talent for finding pure white in the black abyss of goth. This album, however, was their first significant U.S. release, introduced with their bewildering single “Carolyn’s Fingers.” On it, Elizabeth Fraser’s words are impossible to understand: Either they’re being spoken in another tongue, or you’ve temporarily developed aphasia and can’t compute them. Throughout the record, the trio strip back to their basic groundwork of bass-guitar melodies, a pattern they’d continue on Heaven or Las Vegas two years later. Blue Bell Knoll is not as dynamic a listen as that masterpiece, but its exploration of widescreen space is essential, and set down the canvas for glorious colors to come.
“Heaven or Las Vegas” (1990)
After the 1990 release of their most critically acclaimed album, Heaven or Las Vegas, the band left 4AD Records for Fontana Records, where they released their final two albums. The group released Heaven or Las Vegas in late 1990. The most commercially successful of their many recordings, the album rose to the higher reaches of the UK Albums Chart immediately after its release.
Despite the success of the record and the subsequent concert tours, not everything was well with the band. They parted ways with 4AD following Heaven or Las Vegas partly because of conflicts with the label’s founder Ivo Watts-Russell, and were close to breaking up over internal problems due in large part to Guthrie’s substance abuse. “Heaven or Las Vegas”, which was their biggest hit. It’s extremely accessible and probably the best place to start if you’re a complete novice to the band.
While on their international tour supporting Heaven or Las Vegas, the group signed a new recording contract with Mercury Records subsidiary Fontana for the UK and elsewhere, while retaining their US relationship with Capitol. In 1991, 4AD and Capitol released a box set that compiled the band’s EPs from 1982 to 1990, and also included a bonus disc of rare and previously unreleased material.
Heaven or Las Vegas. You’re either in the good place or a gaudy replica designed to trick you. Sweet relief or a desert mirage. It sounds like a trap, doesn’t it? That’s kind of what the record was for Cocteau Twins, too. Six albums in, the gothy cult heroes of 4AD Records gave in completely to the pop urges they had flirted with on 1988’s Blue Bell Knoll and 1984’sTreasure. Happily, the resulting masterpiece not only defined the Scottish trio for good, it established an ethereal blueprint for dream pop. While there are countless examples of indie bands struggling to marry their deep weirdness to pop structures, the Cocteaus’ version of a slightly more commercial sound did not compromise their individual idiosyncrasies. Rather, it distilled them into something painfully gorgeous and utterly mesmerizing.
Elizabeth Fraser, Robin Guthrie, and Simon Raymonde were each going through heavy periods when they wrote and recorded Heaven or Las Vegas at their own September Sound Studios in London. Raymonde, the keyboard player and bassist, had just lost his father, composer Ivor Raymonde. Guthrie, the guitarist and drum programmer, was at the height of his cocaine addiction, and his partner, vocalist Fraser, was a new mother keeping things together. Fraser had been known for her impressionistic approach to melody, focusing more on the sounds of the words and effortlessly bending them into evocative gibberish with her piercing soprano. On Heaven or Las Vegas, though, you can actually tell that she is singing about her relationship and her daughter, still in an oblique and conflicted way but still with a newfound confidence she attributed to her pregnancy. At the time, dream pop was one of the few rock subgenres where overt femininity was not only tolerated, it was necessary. Fraser had already redefined how operatic vocals, glossolalia, and a vaguely new age aesthetic fit into the ’80s alternative world, but here she was being newly direct with declarations of motherly love—building hooks out of them, in fact, like on the effortlessly cool dance track “Pitch the Baby.” Arranging her peerless voice into more elaborate layers and flows, Fraser centered herself at the forefront of a band now pushing the limits of lushness.
The crucial counterpoint to Fraser’s voice can be found in Guthrie’s elaborate, effects-laden guitar loops, which sent reverb through the songs like an industrial fan whipping air around a warehouse. As a guitarist, Guthrie is to dream pop what Kevin Shields is to shoegaze. But by adopting a dazed, dreamy slide technique on songs like “Cherry-Coloured Funk,” one of the best scene-setting opening tracks ever, Guthrie cemented another aspect of his signature guitar jangle; it’s a tone you can hear traces of in everyone from Lush’s Miki Berenyi to the xx’s Romy Madley Croft to the Weeknd . With Guthrie providing the blissful wave of noise, Raymonde adding the crucial ominous undertone, and Fraser tending to the otherworldly drama, the band reached the heights of their mood-setting abilities while still keeping most of the songs around three minutes. Not that you’d necessarily notice the song lengths: Heaven or Las Vegas is less a collection of tracks than a 37-minute journey to a surreal realm. You don’t know where you are, exactly; you just notice the warm feeling that washes over you when you arrive. Heaven, after all, is subjective.
“Four-Calendar Café” (1993)
Fraser and Guthrie ended their 13-year relationship in 1993, and by this time had a young daughter, Lucy-Belle, born in 1989. The band’s seventh LP, Four-Calendar Café, their first since Fraser and Guthrie’s separation, was released in late 1993. The band explained that Four-Calendar Café was a response to the turmoil that had engulfed them in the intervening years, with Guthrie entering rehab and quitting alcohol and drugs, and Fraser undergoing psychotherapy.
“Bluebeard”, written as her relationship with Guthrie was disintegrating, is often held up as an example of Fraser at her most forthright and confessional. Even though it features lines like “Are you the right man for me? Are you safe? Are you my friend? Or are you toxic for me?’, it’s surprisingly light and breezy.
“Love’s Easy Tears”, along with its music video makes me want to go to the flat of someone who owns a massive television and take psychedelics for several days.
“Milk & Kisses” (1996)
1995 saw the release of two new EPs: Twinlights and Otherness. Some of the tracks on Twinlights and Otherness were versions of songs from the band’s eighth album, Milk & Kisses (1996). The record saw the return of more heavily layered guitars, and Fraser began once again to obscure her lyrics, though not entirely. Two singles were taken from the album: “Tishbite (song)” “Violaine” both exist in two CD versions, with different A-side and B-side included on each. The band, augmented by an extra guitarist and a drummer, toured extensively to support the album, their last for Mercury/Fontana. A new song, “Touch Upon Touch”, which debuted during the live shows and was recorded later in 1996 was also one of the two songs written and arranged by Fraser, Guthrie and Raymonde for Chinese pop singer Faye Wong for her Mandarin album Fuzao released in June 1996, the other being “Tranquil Eye” from Violaine released in October 1996.
In 1997, while recording what was to have been their ninth LP, the trio disbanded over irreconcilable differences in part related to the breakup of Guthrie and Fraser. While a number of songs were partially recorded and possibly completed, the band has stated that they will likely never be finished or released in any form.
In 1999 Bella Union, the record label founded by Guthrie and Raymonde, released a double-CD Cocteau Twins compilation entitled BBC Sessions. The collection is a complete record of the band’s appearances on UK radio programs from 1982 to 1996, with rare and unreleased material included. In 2000, 4AD released Stars and Topsoil, a compilation of selected songs picked by the band members that had been released during their years with 4AD; all recordings had been digitally remastered by Guthrie. Finally, in 2003, 4AD followed Stars and Topsoil with the release of digitally remastered versions of the first six Cocteau Twins LPs.
Later in 2005, 4AD released a worldwide limited edition of 10,000 compilation box set titled, Lullabies to Violaine, a 4-disc set that details every single and EP released from 1982 to 1996. This was shortly followed up by two 2-disc sets of the same names, known simply as Volume 1 and Volume 2.