Cocteau Twins : Classic or Dud

anyway. victorialand, blue bell knoll, heaven or las vegas probably favourites. even four-calendar cafe had some sublime moments.

not so keen on the very early stuff 82/83. 85-90 probably best period. not as edgy then, but don't see them as an 'edgy' band.

favourite song has to be 'the spangle maker'

and those sleeves were wonderful

But actually they're rubbish. Yeah they're beautiful ethereal cascades of sound but it just makes no connection with me, and listening to a whole album is like being force-fed merinques.

I probably differ from most fans, since I didn't think their middle period ('88-'93) was so hot. To me, their career was similar to the Comsat Angels and Throwing Muses in that they started hot, cooled off, and ended hot. That said, I maintain that the endless murk and cheap rhythms of Garlands are totally bitchen. Same regard is held for Milk and Kisses, which most people tend to sour on.

Paging Mr. Raggett...

There's more variety in their work than most give them credit for, I think, and while there are certainly patchy albums here and there, _Treasure_, _Victorialand_ and _Heaven or Las Vegas_ alone touch me and cut to the quick. Oh yeah, and "The Spangle Maker" single and the _Aikea-Guinea_ EP and "Pink Orange Red" and...

I like the meringue comparison, but no. The Victorian mentions, album title aside, can be laid at the feet of Vaughn Oliver's art. It's all about taking something dank and making it beautiful while keeping the heft, and about making something that *shouldn't* work -- incomprehensible lyrics, an emphasis on effects over clear melody -- work like a charm. Wouldn't change a single thing about 'em.

I'm on a spree tonight - and I'm massively back into the Cocs. I think Treasure is one of my all time fave albums, but my knowledge of the rest of their stuff doesn't extend much past it, only to "Four Calendar Cafe" (which I realise is to Treasure as Sing when Your Winning is to Life thru a Lens).

So go on - lets speak of how awesomely great Lorelei is.

One of the great bands of the 80s.

some time last autumn i had a funny turn :

falling in love with the cocteaus again.

http://www.ambitious-outsiders.com/images/lineup05.jpg

my heart just broke

I have only heard Heaven Or Las Vegas. Wouldn't say classic, because I have to be in the right mood for her *glossolalia*. But it sure is pretty music.

There must be UK dates, surely.

mdma

together

As for possible artistic directions, I could imagine a piece driven by Fripp Soundscape and Frisell Loops with electro-acoustic drum work By Pat Mastelloto, some electronically treated harmonized trumept lines by Nils Petter Molvaer, some excentric fretless bass work by Mick Karn and, beautiful piano/synth treatments courtesy of Ryuichi Sakamoto. I could think of may other possible directions, but this is just off the top of my head. All in all I still think she has the potential to surpass even the greatest cocteau twins moments, given the right environment.

I JUST RIPPED MILK & KISSES TO MY IPOD THEREFORE I RULE OKEETHNCXBYEEY

underrated album, that

The last one I bought was Four Calendar Cafe, but I think I heard Milk & Kisses once. Perhaps I should seek it out again.

"Violaine" is one of my favorite late-period Cocteau songs -- it stands up to the best of Heaven or Las Vegas, easily

This is the one Cocteau Twins album I actually had sex to.

intentionally?

Oh my god if Cocteaus could ever forgive you

Meanie!

Tell the X Mal Deutschland fans to go fuck it all.

Cocteaus happiness.
Quisquose.

I'm gonna sic the vinyl on your ass. I'm trying to peaceful, but...
sorry.

EAT THE VINYL

EAT IT

Oh shit

In a certain celebrity mailout this appeared...

'The reason the Cocteau Twins' comeback last year didn't happen is because even though Robin Guthrie and Liz Fraser had put their differences to the side (clue - £££££) Liz insisted that her partner be the drummer on the tour. Fine.

All was going well until Robin got pissed, looked through the tour expenses and saw that Liz's partner was getting paid a bit more than the other hired hands. He went batshit mental, rang up Liz and told her that this was outrageous and that he shouldn't even be getting paid AT ALL as Liz was making money and so her partner "didn't need to be paid".

Liz basically said (in indecipherable made-up language no doubt) she couldn't take this and if Robin was kicking off even before the tour started, it could only get worse. So she walked and that was it - reunion over. She apparently walked away from "millions".

Good for her.

I can understand being annoyed that he's making MORE than others but not getting paid AT ALL? Fuck that.

Not getting paid at all, says an anonymous secondhand source.

Yeah there's an obvious grain of salt there but still.

Give 'em a couple more years when they need to pay their mortgages, they'll come around.

I wouldn't be surprised if that was actually Guthrie's reaction. He always came across as socially retarded.

A story on Ms. Fraser in the Guardian the other day:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/nov/26/cocteau-twins-elizabeth-fraser-interview

And we do all grow older:

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Music/Pix/pictures/2009/11/26/1259231936986/Elizabeth-Fraser-Cocteau--001.jpg

Looks v. elegant!

She's been offered sums "beyond your wildest dreams" to collaborate with other artists – "the weirdest one was Linkin Park"

The hell.

The new song sadly sounds too much like Gotan Project but her voice is still awesome.

Which is all you need, really. (Well, maybe.)

Article's a little wrong at points when it comes to her musical silence -- for instance, she appeared (briefly) on the first two Lord of the Rings film scores, as apparently both Howard Shore and Fran Welsh were major Cocteaus fans, and she's specifically namechecked by both of them in the DVD documentaries, etc. etc.

And of course this was beautiful

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRq7FxiSmxY

I'll take any excuse to repost this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaOlNfC8_xQ

She's been offered sums "beyond your wildest dreams" to collaborate with other artists – "the weirdest one was Linkin Park"

LOL just saw this.

I'll take any excuse to repost this:

The...hell.

Article's a little wrong at points when it comes to her musical silence -- for instance, she appeared (briefly) on the first two Lord of the Rings film scores

Yeah I noticed that error too, his claim she "only" did the Massive Attack album. Crap! She also worked with FSOL, Yann Tiersen, and Peter Gabriel (her work on the Millenium Dome album is lovely).

Is her single available somewhere online, the RT website or something?

Oh and she did that gorgeous song with the Bathers!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbPhJPY1iKc

Hahaha that Cocteau Madness video is amazing.

Reading back through the thread it seems like "not liking Cocteau Twins" was the mid 80s/early 90s equivalent of "not liking Radiohead".

Actually maybe it still is.

Really? I rarely come across people who vehemently dislike them or think theyre not cool to like. I do come across peopel whove not heard them though, or are indifferent.

I dunno. With advent of the internets and it being so easy to be a music "expert" they're arguably more popular than ever, with which comes the inevitable backlash viz "They're so unanimously liked that I intensify what would otherwise be indifference to their music" &c.

That clip up is so o_0 in ways I can't actually articulate. It's almost like a parallel universe or something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTx8VnZBvDc

some things are better not explained it seems

This isnt stuff I didnt already know (the stuff about random dictionary words and whatnot). She's said that heaps of times.

OOh she's never actually read'em out before though! haha! That was amusing.

I did know that a few songs were like, lists of scientific insect names and stuff.

so I just found out that "Memory Gongs" off Moon and the Melodies is a Harold Budd track called "Flowered Knife Shadows (for Simon Raymonde)" with a couple of gongs dubbed over the beginning?

Is it? I should track that down and compare em. I was just listening to M&tM yesteday funnily enough.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ez_ULa7PI8s

Wow its exactly the damn same.

It's from a Budd album of the same year I think so fair enough but the 2 different titles is an oddity. As I said, "Memory Gongs" has gongs and that's the diff.

Yeah it was "Lovely Thunder", right?

k so this is one of those things where i bought 'heaven & las vegas' on cassette in like 1993 and really dug it but for never reason never sought out another album. now, many years later, i feel like it's time for a second cocteaus album. what shall it be?

Victorialand. Don't bother with the goth shit or the last couple.

Victorialand or Blue Bell Knoll

I'd say "whichever one you see first".

I've recently come to the conclusion that they're probably one my top three bands of all time.

cocteau twins, smash mouth, sugar ray

Swap out Sugar Ray (fourth) with Crazy Town and you pegged it.

s1ocki: get Milk and Kisses, Garlands and Victorialand; IMO those three along with Heaven & Las Vegas are the essential Cocteau albums

Treasure and Heaven Or Las Vegas are my favourite, by far.

I really thought Treasure was the acknowledged masterpiece?

Victorialand is my fave album, along with Head Over Heels. Lots of their EP's are essential though, especially Love's Easy Tears and Aikea-Guinea.

Am gonna post this on the rolling Bandcamp/free albums thread, but this band Ahsrae Fax put out a pretty great Cocteaus-ish record in 2002 called "Static Crash". They were a little ahead/out of their time, and seemed to play with a lot of noise bands, but they were great live and super nice folks. Can't recommend this record enough, good female vox, synths, textured guitars etc.:

http://ashraefax.bandcamp.com/album/static-crash

yeah treasure WTF, if you only have two get treasure and heaven or las vegas.

I'd happily recommend one of their singles collections or the BBC sessions to a newbie. Even their compilations are fantastic (and some of their non-LP tracks are among their very best).

'the pink opaque' is a good early years overview if you don't know that stuff very well

i am a 'head over heels' guy all the way tho

Highly recommend The Pink Opaque. It was released in the 80s as a "hello America" introduction to the band, comprised of a few album tracks and singles, and it did its job well. Even though it's not a proper album, it's my favorite.

some of those bbc sessions are better than the studio tracks (esp. 'hazel' and 'blind dumb deaf')

Head Over Heels and Heaven or Las Vegas are my favorite LPs, but The Spangle Maker EP, reprised in its entirety (minus a 7" edit) on The Pink Opaque comp, remains their finest moment.

agreed - I would go w/BBC Sessions or Pink Opaque to get a sense of where you would want to go next as far as the albums proper.

"The Spangle Maker" is one of the all-time greatest songs of ever.

^ fact

If we're discussing Cocteau Twins soundalikes, there's a lot of goth dribble that gets the instrumental side down, but almost none have a vocalist that can pull off Liz Frasier's fluid / Ella Fitzgerald like stylings. My only strong recommendation here is the unfortunately named California band Orange, fronted by Sonya Waters, who released an eponymous album in 1994 on Dewdrops Records run by Brant from the 4AD mailing list.

Hey, Youtube has Feijoa by Orange

Sorry, I actually regret posting my version above, I had just run across a mention of that band and was excited about it! Nothing is as good at being Cocteau Twins as the real deal of course. Sorry to cloud the waters.

now i dont know WHAT to do

fwiw, we're all right and Noodle Vague is full of shit.

Victorialand is the best

If you lke Heaven Or Las Vegas, Blue bell knoll and Milk and Honey are definitely the closest to that sound. All their albums are great, though.

s1ocki, get Milk & Kisses

I guess it depends on whether you like your CT with a big bottom end or if you like your CT all whispy and ethereal. Heaven or Las Vegas is probably the perfect album because it straddles that fence ably.

Her album's not going to happen is it?

Back to the question 'Treasure' for me, though they're all pretty much interchangeable.

Yeah, if you're looking for something Heaven Or Las Vegas-ish, get Milk and Kisses. Maybe Four Calendar Cafe (although it seems to be held in slightly lower esteem for reasons I don't understand).

Decipherable lyrics is the reason

it was kind of disappointing at the time but now it sounds great.

I wouldn't mind an album with Yann Tiersen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N5KITNGDtc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Jb1xm-eCvc

Sanpaku thanks for the Orange link! I forgot all about those guys.

i appreciate all the answers but i can't help feel like i'm back at square one here folks

well, most/all of their albums are pretty special. again, if you want stuff that sounds like HILV, go for the surrounding albums (blue bell knoll,four calendar cafe, milk and kisses, heck even victorialand). tresure and head over heels are incredible but are relatively harsher and more goth.

dang i remember pining for this comp back in high school. probably just for the alison's halo track:
http://www.discogs.com/Various-Splashed-With-Many-A-Speck/release/597128

Seriously, I can't think of many other bands deserving of a 'BUY EVERYTHING!' recommendation.

Though I've got a bunch of songs from every album, I gotta admit when I'm in a cocteau mood I just throw on my college radio station's old LP of The Pink Opaque

Singles comp is the way to go on this one, folks: http://www.discogs.com/Cocteau-Twins-Lullabies-To-Violaine-Volume-1/master/248410

s1ocki here are some polls for reference, top 3 in each are HOLV, Treasure, & Victorialand.

Best Cocteau Twins album

BEST COCTEAU TWINS ALBUM POLL

S1ocki - I second the Vol 1 Lullabies to Violaine recommend. You can find it cheap and it's both a great overview of the evolution of their sound and has, for me, absolutely crucial ep's: Tiny Dynamine and Love's Easy Tears kill me every time.

And I agree with Woodsy the Allen - they are definitely a 'buy everything' band.

Stars And Topsoil (1982-1990) is also a good comp that has tracks from every era and almost every album and EP.

singles comp is definitely a good investment

Slocki I think the issue here is that Cocteau Twins albums all express different relational arrangements of their qualities, such that there's not really an obvious answer to "which is the second album I need". This is especially because Heaven or Las Vegas isn't at the far end of their sound's continuum, but is somewhere close to the middle. So it's like you're in a choose your own adventure and you can go down one of several different doors based on your preferences.

I'd ask: what is it that you like most about Heaven or Las Vegas?

- if it's the sharpness and drama of the tunes, try Treasure

- if it's the sensuosness of the atmospherics and vocals, try Victorialand

- if it's the lushly produced thickness of the sound, try Milk & Kisses

- if it's the concise energy of the songwriting, try Head Over Heels

I probably wouldn't recommend Blue Bell Knoll or Four Calendar Cafe as your next choice in part because I think they're slightly lesser albums and in part because they're close enough stylistically and chronologically to Heaven or Las Vegas (in very different ways to one another though) that what is loveable in them is a slant on things that are loveable in that album.

No. No. No. The best Cocteau Twins 'album' is Tiny Dynamine/Echoes In A Shallow Bay, two Eps released in quick succession during the fall of 1985. Just perfect from beginning to end.

I would actually put Tiny Dynamine/Echoes In A Shallow Bay in a slightly different category in that (a) it's at the absolute center of the band's aesthetic, and (b) perhaps for this reason its greatness is much more evident once you've absorbed and internalised that aesthetic.

Whereas with most of the albums what makes them interesting is how they push into the spotlight a different facet of the group's sound.

Four Calendar Cafe is underrated, but its merits cannot be justly appreciated without the attendant b-sides, particularly Summer-blink. I completely love Liz Frazer's 'affirmation' lyrics, I never get tired of hearing her sing 'I accept myself as I really am' and 'I'm doing a fine job.' Especially after viewing some of the psychologically disturbed interviews (see Youtube, you'll find them) of her with Robin Guthrie prior to this period. It's no wonder they can't reform, ever, at any price!

xpost Tim F: you are completely correct!

I completely love Liz Frazer's 'affirmation' lyrics, I never get tired of hearing her sing 'I accept myself as I really am' and 'I'm doing a fine job.'

For real. I like to pair it with something from Garlands for extra emphasis.

i really do love how everybody has a different answer and that the catalog is so much bigger than i had assumed!

great post tim.

i would say what really enchanted me about heaven or las vegas was the way the band combined that gorgeous gauzy ethereality with a driving, pulse-racing intensity

the way songs like "pitch the baby" build to a sort of euphoric climax... does that make sense?

Yes -- see "The Spangle Maker" (1984) or "Seekers Who Are Lovers" (1996). They did that sort of thing quite well.

since this got buried beneath the fold from two years ago, let me recommend this local TV news feature about a CT show in Ohio, circa 1985:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaOlNfC8_xQ&feature=player_embedded

Yes, that was brilliant!

"consistently one of britain's number one bands"

I love that clip.

Also, what everyone else said. I don't care if it's contradictory, just get everything, thank me later.

worth it for the ethereal indie-goth look combined with a moustache - think this is quite a rare sighting?

i'd go for garlands and four-calendar café. as they are different. their first album garlands is a post-punk album with some synthesizer experiments where they are still quite rough and have not yet found their final sound. four-calendar café has tunes which are as strong as those from heaven or las vegas but here they sing intelligible lyrics. btw there are many albums by them which did not age well i find.

Can't believe the Otherness ep has not been mentioned yet. Wish there was a whole albums worth of Seefeel remixing Cocteau Twins.

otherness didn't live up to expectations, for me. just kind of sits there and bores me.

So many EPs I've never heard of...

the way songs build to a sort of euphoric climax... does that make sense?

My friend and I used to call this the Cocteau structure. It's very minimalist and repetitive for most of the song and then BAM it explodes into fireworks and confetti and sometimes swooshes of caramel and cotton candy.
They've used that specific structure throughout their career, the fisrt one was "The Spangle Maker" I think.
There's also "Donimo", "Feet-Like Fins", "Great Spangled Fritillary", "Sigh's Smell of Farewell", "Ooze Out and Away, Onehow", "Frou-Frou Foxes in Midsummer Fires", "Pur", and "Treasure Hiding".

Can't believe the Otherness ep has not been mentioned yet.

I like it a lot, but I guess on a slightly different wavelength than the one on which I enjoy most of their other stuff.

So many EPs I've never heard of...

No sweat, s1ocki. I do believe the entirety of their EP and single discography is covered by their two singles collections.

My friend and I used to call this the Cocteau structure.

As utilized by the Sundays to wonderful effect in "Joy", imo.

this was really the first band that totally enchanted me. I heard Wax And Wane on the radio and started tracking down the records, the Sunburst & Snowblind EP had just come out. then I found Head Over Heels and was hooked, when Treasure came out I was gushing to any of my friends who would listen. I remember Tesco Vee listed it as one of his favorite 1985 records in a MRR issue, alongside Swans' Cop.

the covers and general anonymity were a big part of the mystique back then, you really couldn't find out much about them and it was like... I still don't know how the hell 23 Envelope did some of those sleeves, like alien art.

I'd never recomment M&K as a starting point, it is really a bit to bland. You need to be hit over the HEAD with their stuff. Head over Heels or Treasure and Pink Opaque are what I'd go for.

Any of the compilations y'cant go wrong to be honest. Maybe try "Stars and Topsoil" for an overview.

But, I started off with Garlands after Pink Opaque, and i'mn one of those rarer "prefer Garlands/Lullabies/Pepperment Pig" people.

Co-sign, love the dark early stuff as much as the woozy later material.

the way songs build to a sort of euphoric climax... does that make sense?
― A Little Princess btw (s1ocki), Wednesday, March 28, 2012 10:27 AM

My friend and I used to call this the Cocteau structure. It's very minimalist and repetitive for most of the song and then BAM it explodes into fireworks and confetti and sometimes swooshes of caramel and cotton candy.
― LeRooLeRoo, Wednesday, March 28, 2012 5:43 PM

I feel a thread coming on...

the kid arrested for his hair went on to drum for majesty crush.

Jesus, Liz's show is tomorrow and she hasn't cancelled yet. Trying not to jinx it, but it looks like this is actually going to happen. Haven't seen her perform in 20 years maybe and can't wait?

a few Cocteaus tracks are promised aren't they? so.. an Ivo here maybe or a Heaven Or Las Vegas there. it'll be very exciting either way!

OK, I know of one ILXor going to the RFH and have told him not to read here. I'm not prepared to spoiler it for others if some of you are going so shout up or I will review tomorrow afternoon.

just put SPOILER ALERT and skip a bunch of lines....must know how it was!!

Ok, will post a summary of my thoughts at about 1300 GMT tomorrow unless someone expressly asks me not to.

fwiw a couple of robin guthrie's collaborations w/harold budd are now available on limited edition vinyl, i picked this one up a couple days back:

http://s.dsimg.com/image/R-3778688-1344077011-4544.jpeg

This thread just reminded me of the exhilarating climax of "The Spangle Maker." Shocks me every single time.

SPOILER ALERT

SPOLIER ALERT

https://p.twimg.com/AzfTieWCAAARI42.jpg

Oomingamk!

OH CHRIST I WANT VIDEO FOR THIS SET PLEASE SOMEONE HELP ME

Like I seriously cosidered a UK trip for this but I didnt trust Liz with her withdrawing from things, and who am i kidding I couldnt have afforded a UK trip anyway, but I want to know how this went!

btw is that setlist for real? Its horribly mispelt :/

searching her name on Twitter confirms the encore repeatedly

daaaaaamn

SPOILER ALERT

REALLY, I'M GOING TO TALK ABOUT THIS GIG

LOOK AWAY IF YOU'RE GOING TO THE RFH

It wasn't very good. In fact, it was one of the most disappointing shows I've ever been at.

I've tried to think overnight about the reasons why, and there are a great many. Firstly, this feels more like a reunion show than any other I've been to - and over the past few years I've done lots; Pixies, MBV, Go4, YMG, Stooges, MC5, Flipper, Sleep, Jesus Lizard, Scratch Acid. But it has none of the energy and joy of those, there's an overwhelming sense of going through the motions. The audience doesn't help, as it mainly comprises late 40s/50somethings that look like the closest they've got to live music since the days of their youth was watching Alan Metcalfe down the wine bar doing Mary Hopkin numbers. Liz herself seems to be joining in, wearing a silver sparkly puffball skirt that clearly hasn't been out of her wardrobe since Charles and Di were still married and her keyboard player - a dead ringer for Jed Hoyle that used to dance for Howard Jones - seems to be wearing a leftover black clown costume from Bowie's Ashes To Ashes video.

Those things are trivial though. The real issues are on stage. The simple truth is that Liz's voice isn't what it was, in any way, shape or form. She's talked in recent interviews about singing quietly now and that she can't do the 'shouting over a wall of noise' any more, but the reality is that it robs her of so very much that made her so special and her range seems massively reduced too. She used to soar like a bird, with huge swooping strokes, whereas now she hops around, curiously one-note, like one of those birds of paradise that are just about their plumage. Still identifiably a bird, yes, but one to look at more than anything else. She's so quiet that she is frequently overwhelmed by the other musicians and, more tellingly, by her backing singers - one of whom is a much better singer than she is. It's also far too quiet overall for me. The guitarist, shorn of Robin's effects board and his volume, is just another bloke playing Byrdsian jangly chords on a solid body Rickenbacker. The keyboards sound like standard 80s wipes. The bass is mixed weirdly, so that the very bottom end booms (even though it is rarely used) with the mid-range muddy and is somewhat indistinct in the overall mix.

Those are fixable, possibly, with better sound at the RFH and a sound system which bands can use rather than one more used to covers bands at the beer festival. The new arrangements of the songs, even if purely so Liz can still sing them, can't be fixed between now and the RFH. Donimo makes me want to cry, and not in a good way. I can't even bring myself to politely clap at the end of it. Everything has been retooled and reworked, in nearly every case taking the dynamism and emotion out. Pearly Dew Drops Drops is being sung by a housewife at the kitchen sink, mumbling under her breath as she washes up. The glorious shout of joy delivered before the drum break and the end is reduced to a "woo-oo-oo". Song To The Siren features about half the tune of any of the previous versions, and unable to do THAT penultimate line the song just peters out with the the final "waiting to hold you" delivered at a rush as part of the curtailed previous line.

The new stuff is of quite a nice Lynch soundtrack feel, but overall the sound which is delivered is almost cafe jazz or World Stage Glastonbury. In fact the whole experience is like if Peter Gabriel hadn't played since leaving Genesis and then came back with the Secret World. It's just so bloody NICE - no, inoffensive. You could imagine the cd being sold on 'other people who bought also bought' Amazon recommendations alongside Take That and Elton John. You could easily imagine it being played as muzak in The Body Shop.

The thing that hurts me the most is, as I've said before, Liz lives on my street which possibly makes this just a personal observation. I see her in the supermarket, the butchers, whatever all the time. I fully expected last night to see her on stage and go FUCKING HELL THAT'S LIZ FRASER OUT OF THE COCTEAU TWINS. Instead she's made LIZ FRASER OUT OF THE COCTEAU TWINS into that woman in the supermarket. Turned the spectacular into the mundane. The anti-Midas touch. That's why I wanted to cry yesterday.

wow. thanks for that, even if totally depressing.

Oh. Wow. :/

The idea especially of her having fucking *backing singers* makes me ill.

tbh I had this feeling about "milk and kisses" (tho Ive warmed on it more since knowig about the whole Buckley angle) but yeah. Bergh.

Maybe I'm being too harsh but the run from Head Over Heels to Love's Easy Tears meant so much it me it was hard not to personalise it. Maybe the RFH sound will fix some of the problems. Maybe I expected too much. Maybe I wanted it to sound like it did then and just wasn't prepared to take this show at face value.

But blasting The Pink Opaque right now I don't think so.

Wow, it really sucks to hear all that about the concert, but thanks a lot for the review.

i feared something like this. holy shit though..

there's a very different take on last night over at Dr0wned 1n S0und...

I'll give him that, the very top of her register is still lovely but she only really used it on the new songs. Where she used it on Cocteaus material the backing singers were doing the bulk of the work.

This is all reminding me of nothing so much as the Four Calendar Cafe tour, Liz on stage but hidden in the arrangements and barely engaging with the songs.

I just played Donimo to Frances (who is not all that when it comes to the 'non-famous' Cocteaus songs) and she swears blind it bears no resemblance to anything that went on last night. She didn't even recognise the vocal line, or the bits of it Liz kept.

It has just struck me. It was like watching ENYA. Draw your own conclusions.

Hahah oh my.

I have now realised if she had done The Spangle Maker, Hitherto or From The Flagstones then I think I would have physically wept. And cursed humanity. And gone hone and died.

I am looking for minor plusses, she didn't butcher my absolute favourites. (Say it out loud, never liked Pearly Dewdrops that much.)

I'm not a huge fan of Harold Budd but doesn't that packaging remind you of running to the record store every time a new 4AD came out?

I'm such a stan for Head over Heels...I guess because it is so un-pop and everyone likes the more accessible albums. I like the crazy sludge of it.

I have no horse in the race - I don't go to reunion gigs as a general rule though I will say that Mission of Burma have basically written the textbook on How To Do A Reunion And Emerge With All Your Dignity Intact - but I have to say that lines like this

The audience doesn't help, as it mainly comprises late 40s/50somethings that look like the closest they've got to live music since the days of their youth was watching Alan Metcalfe down the wine bar doing Mary Hopkin numbers

cast a cloud of suspicion over the rest of the review; it's the sort of observation that suggests the author was looking for something more than music from the gig, which the gig could only have delivered by featuring a fountain of youth at the entrance.

Think what you like -admittedly that's the sort of thing in a paid review that would raise my hackles too - but it was one of the strangest crowds I've seen. The woman from two doors up the street was there, for example, and she never goes out to see music.

Take my Bad News reference out and think instead that I'm trying to evoke how old EVERYBODY was. Like they were searching for your fountain of youth, or their own, preserved in amber since 1990.

Also when you're told to TURN UP AT 7 WITHOUT FAIL for a show with no support that doesn't start till 8:45 and with only one room then there isn't much else to do but observe other people.

Where's the DiS review/discussion? I cant see a thing.

I know it's not what this revive is about, but there's something just overwhelmingly sweet about that Columbus, Ohio news spot--the open-mindedness and optimism are like a best case scenario for the stereotypical "liberal media."

Thanks so much for the review, aldo, even if it confirmed my worst fears about Liz' current state as a performer.
I can't help but think that there are very few scenarios outside of reuniting with CT in which she could give a great performance - and even that would seem to depend on many factors. What a beautiful tragedy, her musical relationship with Robin Guthrie.

I don't think she's doing herself any favors (as a musician) with the company she's keeping these days (her 'touring band'). I tend to find her infinitely more effective as a singer when she's working with a very singular sound palette. And really, what are the chances that a standard rock band set up is going to achieve something half as striking as CT?

So, her voice is not what it used to be. I don't think that stopped her from turning in knockout performances with Massive Attack (as recently as 2006). Short of a one-in-a-million chance that CT could successfully reunite and capture that lighting again, I think Liz could still do some beautiful work with the right electronic producer.

I could see a Burial collaboration producing stunning results - especially now that his work has veered into more ambient territory.

I've been thinking about this and I think it might be a little unfair to be disappointed because it wasn't a Cocteau Twins gig, which is kind of what you're saying aldo. I mean, I get why! But I think its fair that she should be allowed to move into new territory and if her voice is gentler now, then well, thats as it is. TBH I'd rather that that the bizarre scatsinging donkey-yelp phase she went through during the mid 90s tours.

I mean, even the Massive Attack stuff was just her quieter higher register (esp on "teardrop"). Last time I think Ive heard her really belt something out was that bootleg "all flowers" thingy she did with Jeff B.

You're right, and now I've slept on it again that was really one of the major factors - but to a degree making the comparison isn't surprising when half the set is Cocteau Twins songs.

OK, the reality is that the new material is Real Worlds Peter Gabriel world music stuff and is not for me. The CTs songs have been redressed in the same style. It's not something I would choose to listen to and the name Liz Fraser (which, if we're admitting she's not the same singer she was is all it is - a name) isn't enough to make me or win me over. And Song To The Siren was rotten, no matter who was singing it.

The fixable stuff needs to be - turn Liz up, turn the backing singers WAY down, turn the guitar up (and maybe add more Chorus), mix the bass properly, increase the size of the drum baffle, lose the keyboards altogether. But then that's mixing it back to how I think it should be, and not the target audience (whoever that is) so maybe don't do any of that either.

I'll be intrigued to see what other people think. I know of one ILXor going tonight and I told him not to read this, and that I wasn't discussing it with him till afterwards so his opinion won't be coloured by this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtNPv8QypZ4

wait so there are people who like the music of the cocteau twins who think that is not awesome? ok I guess, takes all kinds of opinions. I was expecting catastrophe but that was just fantastic

I was at RFH last night. First things first, I am a mate of aldo's irl and I genuinely love him like a brother. And like all good brother relationships it means you can disagree and in this case he is wrong, with a few valid points.

He is correct about the sound level - I, too,,would have preferred it louder. He is also correct about Donimo, which was the only major disappointment for me. I think Trayce is correct here - this wasn't a Cocteau's reunion and shouldnt be approached as such but Donimo had lost most of its dynamism and had nothing to replace it. Where as Pearly Dewdrop became something else entirely. The joy was replaced by a gorgeous wistfulness. This was Liz saying 'we can't go back and that is sad, but what we have now can be good if different'. This was intelligent nostalgia and, yes, it was probably partly driven by Liz's vocal frailties, but was nevertheless intensely moving.

The new stuff was quite simply beautiful. I can see the 'real world' comparison but I was thinking more eno ambient than Peter Gabriel. And it melded beautifully into the reworked Cocteau's songs. If this stuff ever comes out on a Cd I will be first in the queue.

A word about the backing singers; they were stunning. Gorgeous voices taking the parts Liz couldn't, mainly not because of failings In her voice, but because of the vocal arrangements which were actually quite close to the recordings on most of the Cocteau's part of the set. The musicians were excellent, the sound was astoundingly clean and the 'back projections' simple and effective. A guest appearance by Steve Hackett was also welcome. Say what you like about him, that man can sure play a guitar.

Siren. I am not sure if the You Tube gets across how emotional this was. Yes, it was virtually a different song but once you get over that this reworking was magical. Actually, the major shock was that Liz sang the words correctly!

I said to Aldo last night that it was in my top ten gigs ever. That is hyperbole, but it was tremendous, moving and unforgettable. And if I could get tickets for tonight I would!

After you said that I was half expecting to say "wow, she didn't sound like that on Saturday", but I genuinely think the vocal performance there is awful. Having admitted that Cocteaus baggage coloured my opinions, I'd be tempted to admit the same baggage is colouring other people's in the other direction. From a level playing field and without the LiZ effect I think we'd all be more critical.

It does sound like a lot of the sound issues were fixed in a decent room though. And we didn't get Steve Hackett in Bath.

yeah that clip is amazing imo. but then i didnt pay to see it. looks like The Graun will be doing a rave as Alexis P was saying he was blown away.

Not to rain on any parades, but live Cocteau Twins, at least mid-tour during their later era (New Orleans '91 and Houston '94), were a very iffy proposition. Raymonde and the hired help rather professional, Guthrie chewing gum and looking at the ductwork, and Fraser doing dolphin noise improvisations that only occasionally converged on the tune. It meandered, a lot, without the measured crescendos that must have been constructed from dozens of studio takes and a lot of meth. This live performance from the same tour is a good deal better than the shows I saw:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4arnK6ZFck

After you said that I was half expecting to say "wow, she didn't sound like that on Saturday", but I genuinely think the vocal performance there is awful. Having admitted that Cocteaus baggage coloured my opinions, I'd be tempted to admit the same baggage is colouring other people's in the other direction. From a level playing field and without the LiZ effect I think we'd all be more critical.

I've always appreciated the Cocteaus but have never been a massive fan/follower; in fact, I just started getting Cocteaus albums beyond Milk and Kisses 3 years ago. That performance was... okay? It was very tender and deliberate and obviously meant a lot to the crowd but "Song of the Siren" is a song that I liked a lot more when Messiah sampled it so it never had major emotional impact for me; this rendition basically hit me the same way as the original.

I think she did what she set out to do, and that thing is something that I only ever sporadically get on board with, so I guess in a totally blase way I'm siding with aero here.

I was there tonight and I'm with guilty_boksen. The new material was really extraordinary. I was thinking... Bill Nelson on "Gone To Earth", Philip Glass sopranos (the BVs)... and, wow, Liz (maybe not Robin) is the one with the melodic gift. The mix was great, she sounded terrific and they could have ditched the Cocteaus material and I'd still have loved it.

^^ What he said. Loved how this line-up reclaimed the Cocteaus from being merely proto-shoegazers, and instead suggested an altogether richer, stranger avant-pop act - the missing link between Another Green World and Bitte Orca. Loved the Fripptastic guitarist. Loved the pound-shop Eno guy on keys. Loved the new material, which seemed oddly redolent of Billy Mackenzie and Barry Adamson. All in all probably the best gig I've seen in the last five years. Strangely grateful to Aldo for making the sheer excellence of it all such a glorious surprise.

Invoking Billy M is good enough for me!

that 'song to the siren' performance is awesome!

i did watch the other guy's video of her doing 'pearly-dewdrops drops' from the same set tho and yeah her voice is barely audible on the chorus

the guy's other video*

Glad you all had such a good time. Maybe just the sound in Bath was that bad, Liz' nerves affected her performance, etc etc.

Somebody on DiS saying that the sound was better last night than on Monday, so maybe Bath was just the first step on an evolving route. Wish I'd gone to one of the London shows now.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/aug/07/elizabeth-fraser-review?newsfeed=true

I feel oddly conflicted watching that "siren" youtube clip. She loooks like someone's granny in that outfit, but I remind myself she's always dressed in an endearingly oldfashioned way so I cant o_0 about it now.

I see aldo's point now though; she really isnt making any attempt at all to belt a note, going purely off that clip (not that this song was ever one where that was the case). It isnt disappointing: the frippertronic guitar was gorgeous, and it was an arrangement I really liked! But she really wasn't a powerhouse like she used to be. I will be fair though, its been a very very long time since she last performed and cut her a break, people get older etc.

Even for her recent milder singing that was very subduded. Curious.

Watching that other guy's clips, the new songs are way better for her new singing. Its like David Sylvians recenter stuff. I always said those two should work together.

ugh the Athol Brose one tho. Backing singers! Pipe down!

The mix from my seat was just right wrt the backing singers; they were barely noticeable and were only shading and echoing and augmenting. I did think at the time, if Kate Bush hasn't toured for 30 years because (amongst many other reasons) her studio vocal arrangements were too complex to reproduce live, then here's a solution. I was pretty alarmed at the idea of backing vocalists (when we've all come to hear The Voice) but it totally made sense.

Yeah, one or two Cocteaus songs were pretty pedestrian, but it was all about the new stuff, which is so much richer that anything she's put her name to since about 1988 and, at the same, really not Cocteau-like at all.

I think the issue might be what you touched on, with her its about The Voice - regardless of the music vehicle - and that shouldnt remain the case, really. I did really like those new arrangements! I was reminded of Sylvian and Dolphin Bros and even Porcupine Tree, a bit.

I am now pondering her workign with King Crimson, and that way madness probably lies.

that song to the siren is amazing. performance was very david sylvian, band-wise. I think I would have died at this gig.

That performance was like watching Dame Judi Dench Goes Ambient. Cathartic Liz Fraser always thrills me. Precious Liz Fraser? Sort of bores me.

I don't know - it was both precious and cathartic at the same time? I've seen Lost Highway too many times so a certain Lynchian trippiness came into it for me as well, more or less uninvited :) Also think youtube doesn't quite do it justice...

Dame Judi Dench Goes Ambient

i would buy ten copies of this record

dame can dance

Ain't that a smack in the calfskin.

i wonder why she never played live since; i wonder if she read this thread.

Haha, welcome back, Hitler reacts meme! This is a good one:

http://www.brooklynvegan.com/archives/2015/09/return_of_the_d.html

1987 looks like a big blank space in the history of the band, surprising how heavy their output was in the preceding years. What were they doing in that year? (Besides a great deal of coke in the case of poor Robin Guthrie.) Did they tour actively in 1987 even if they weren't putting anything out for nearly a two-year period?

They bought a unit in a warehouse in North Acton and built their own studio, roping in Dif Juz to do the plastering :) I think they just spent a chunk of '87 doing that.

Crushed was on Lonely As An Eyesore in '87, but I think that dates from the Love's Easy Tears sessions.

they were just really into Inspector Morse that year

Guthrie was doing some producing that year:The Gun Club. AR Kane.

Guthrie was doing some producing that year:The Gun Club. AR Kane.

They didn't tour for 3-4 years in the late 80s.

While I'm here... here's 50 odd Cocteau Twins gigs!

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVLv8TgfCZGTMigjTfEiBxROjN8CT_Rx1

Holy shit, thanks

This is accurate.

Created a new TikTok challenge: Cocteau Twins sing-a-long pic.twitter.com/mWSgm0MvLC

— rebekah entralgo fernández (@rebekahentralgo) July 30, 2020

That’s great.

I have been enjoying that tweet all morning

aw I thought there'd be more examples

sugar hiccup is an amazing song, even though she sings "sugar hitler" throughout the song. singing "hiccup" over and over with heavy reverb is like pinching the tip of your tongue with your fingers and saying "am i a huge apple?"

despite that, i have been on an amazing cocteau twins ride this year. 2020 - covid19 and cocteau twins, is how i will remember it

yeah she really lays into that vocal, it's joyous

describe this ride, Karl? Have you been thru the whole discography (incl 4CC?!)? Focused on a particular album? Live cuts, b-sides, videos, interviews, what? I'm curious. I'm overdue for an immersion myself.

This is the first I've seen that TikTok, and lo, a new d/n.

I gotta shout out the balmy stretch on side two of Blue Bell Knoll when they go bossanova for two songs (Suckling the Mender -> Spooning Good Singing Gum). Utter bliss

one of my fav Liz vocal moments is in the third line of “pearly dewdrops drops” where she does this high pitched almost-scream for a single note.. reliably spine-tingling

xp rip van winko

very much unstructured, and not a very deep dive at all. i'm a total rookie, which is my favorite thing to be with music - a rookie is still at the beginning of it all.

general journey so far:
2000s-2016ish - always heard cocteau twins were really cool, i knew generally who they were, but every time i listened to them it was probably a mp3 played on a laptop, rarely a real speaker system, generally only a song or two at a time. i mentally categorized them as "had to be there"

2017-19 - slow awakening, particularly with Heaven or Las Vegas (the album). a few songs struck me, and i started to listen to it every couple months, instead of every few years. we also ad a comp (stars and topsoil) that my partner would play on occasion.

unidentified time, 2019/20 - 420 unlock, "Frou-frou Foxes in Midsummer Fires". in a certain mood i would write way tf too much about the experience of loving that song for the first time. now it's not even my favorite on the album. holy shit

2020 - a couple months of continued Heaven or Las Vegas worship - i am a slow listener. but then i finally decided to venture out to the other stuff. for a brief moment, i was of the opinion that Garlands was the greatest album of all time. but it turned out that i just really liked "wax and wane" way too much. still, it was a gamechanger song for me because i started hearing them in a new way. there are all these tenuous connections in that era (to me at least) between punk and post punk and goth and 4AD and the like, sometimes it's hard to connect the dots. the Cocteau Twins of "wax and wane" still sound gloriously like the way they sound in their late 80s version; it was almost like holding up the same object in a different light and getting a sense of its weight.

victorialand is where i started getting obsessed, though. i mean...there's pretty much no bass. but it doesn't sound tinny, it sounds light. it's hallucinatory in stretches. i've listened to it a million times and it's hard for me to even mention specific songs because they all just flow together. i'm not sure i've ever heard it without listening to the whole thing.

i was also in a harold budd-mode earlier this year so of course i gave a good amount of time to The Moon and the Melodies.

treasure is my current obsession. i am astounded by how much they own their sound. i can immediately recognize them now, it's unmissable, despite there being a million bands that try to do the same thing.

i haven't even really listened to blue bell knoll that much, yet. or the post heaven or las vegas stuff. plenty of time. <3

i keep attempting a complete catalog listen, chronologically, and then i get stuck in treasure and just play it over and over

on the other hand,

Blue Bell Knoll [Capitol, 1988]
Harold Budd records in their studio. The Bulgarian State Radio and Television Female Vocal Choir records on their label. I understand that they're more foolish than either (not naive, not after six years), and that they've been known to milk momentary momentum out of electric guitars, but the affinities are there--these faeries are in the aura business. So what are they doing on the alternative rock charts? Ever hear the one about being so open-minded that when you lay down to sleep your brains fall out? C+

completely fuck that guy forever

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_9IsLaK4yo

BBK is probably still my favorite and I don't understand Xgau's criticism at all (I often don't)

Victorialand is mid-wreckingly great, "How to Bring a Blush to the Snow" is every comfort I ever needed. I'd advise you to spend more time with Garlands, title track is fantastic, "Shallow Then Halo" astonishing, "Grail Overfloweth" the bleak heaven all us Goths wanted back in the day. Blue Bell Knoll is more intricate but similarly lush as HOLV. And call me when you pop the lid on Love's Easy Tears, the zenith of everything great about them.
A big realisation for me a few years back was that I love Beach House because they sound so much like CT, no coincidence that they're on Bella Union I guess.

haha, was just thinking about beach house and CT! for some reason, reading that christgau thing made me think "would he hate something like beach house today?"

i'm not a total noob with blue bell knoll (i was actually listening to 'the itchy glowbo bow' just as brimstead posted it!), i just have only listened to it maybe 5 times at this point. looking forward to #500

just to pin a soon to be dated covid-19 take on the cocteau twins, tbh i have spent a lot of 2020 wandering around my house with noise canceling headphones, in a daze, working during work hours or in the evening, losing myself in an album in the middle of the night on the couch or in the middle of a workday, working from home. cocteau twins have been a perfect soundtrack to whatever this year has been for me.

Karl ya gotta give time to the astonishing singles as well, handily compiled on Lullabies To Violaine

i mean, "suckling the mender"? how is this even real? i love that a real band laid this to tape

xp oh nice, i see it's got sugar hitler! ;)

are their singles generally separate from the albums?

most of those, yes

"Ice-Blink Luck" A-side is on HOLV but everything before that is EP-only

nice! i will probably be listening to this tonight at some point, thanks! :)

i only have Heaven or Las Vegas and Stars and Topsoil on LP. i have a feeling the next few months are going to be expensive, but i gotta get all this shit

karl, the ep’s are so, so good. love’s easy tears is sometimes my favorite release of theirs. an exquisite 15 minutes of music.

the two releases i first heard way back when i listened to music obsessively on tapes: the tiny dynamine ep and the pink opaque comp. i still get wistful goosebumps when i revisit them.

completely agree that the lullabies to violaine comp is essential.

ok, i'm listening now. i'm such a sucker for motorik ("feathers oars-blades"). are these chronological? i assume this is 1981. the influence of motorik is everywhere but i'm trying to think of another 1981 track that carries the torch so well

yeah the EPS are necessary.. but the sound on lullabies to violaine is kinda ass-y

I hiked to the actual Blue Bell Knoll a few months ago :D
While she was in Europe I'd go through my sister's tape collection for driving music cause my car only had a tape deck yet I had hardly any tapes. Chose 4 Calendar Cafe and drove around to it on the 1st nice day of Spring. Perfect soundtrack, I fell in love. Sis also had Heaven or Las Vegas which I also borrowed and loved, and Treasure which for some reason I only liked one song on. In college, Milk and Kisses was ubiquitous in record shops but I heard it wasn't very good so never bought it. Figured they were one of those bands who had a couplefew albums that really clicked with me and that's all.
Fast forward to a couple years ago when I signed up for streaming services and their earlier albums would come up in suggestions or playlists, causing a mindblown.gif reaction in me. Not only was there a bunch more stuff of theirs that I liked (ie literally everything else I hadn't heard) but I liked much of it more than the stuff I'd already known (or at least liked it as much).

I hiked to the actual Blue Bell Knoll a few months ago :D

i didn't know it was a real place, so any details would be gobbled up, by me

"from the flagstones"!

love this one.

i think gated drums were a big issue for me, for a while. not sure when that stopped, but it's been a long time, and now the effect feels as otherworldly as i imagine it must have seemed at the time

yeah Lullabies to Violaine has terrible mastering, go with the Pink Opaque it's their best comp

did their original releases sound good, at least? i should probably make sure i don't accidentally purchase an OG copy of a poorly mastered record

yes, they sound great - this is the way to go IMO:

https://www.discogs.com/Cocteau-Twins-Cocteau-Twins-Singles-Collection/master/5467

the original vinyl and CD releases sound great, the CD remasters are a little hot but not terrible and frankly they fucked up Lullabies to Violaine... no clue about any reissued vinyl

^^ yeah, and on the plus side I bet original CD versions of those singles are cheap

honestly, the reissue of Heaven and Las Vegas that i have seems to be panned by everyone for having absolutely disastrous sound. i guess i blew my ears out playing drums in a concrete basement, growing up, but it still sounds fucking amazing to me. so i'm not too nitpicky

some of the greatest musical moments of my life have been in extremely poor listening circumstances, whether that was listening to a release in mitigated circumstances or listening to an amazing live performance in the middle of a push and pull of bodies

The Spangle Maker: FUCK YEAH

well that came out of nowhere from the end. jfc. i love you all <3

The Spangle Maker: FUCK YEAH

otm

was the spangle maker not on treasure? it's from 1984? what, they're just releasing the spangle maker as a non-album single like it's no big deal? wtf

they have a ton of non-album material!

i don't deserve this. none of us deserve this

The Spangle Maker EP has Pearly Dewdrops' Drops on it!

wow, you haven't heard Love's Easy Tears yet, have you... it's not on Stars and Topsoil

Blue Bell Knoll is on Boulder Mtn in southern Utah, a little above 11000 feet. Feels a bit out of place since you have this enormous high plateau surrounded by your typical southern Utah rocky desert. I planned to hike to Blind Lake, and once I got there I looked at my GPS map and noticed Blue Bell Knoll was on top of the ridge behind the lake. I also had no idea it was a real place until that moment! Honestly the lake was much prettier than the knoll itself, but for their names it's vice versa. I think I read that nobody in the band has gone up there, they just read the name somewhere and liked the sound of it.

Is there a reason they released so much non-LP stuff?

The 80s was an era where bands released a lot of EPs

I suppose. They seem to have more than most. Maybe it's just that they have more quality non album output. Or that other bands active in the 80s that I listen to are the anomaly for having so little.

The UK seemed to care more about singles than albums in the 80s, too... so many US versions of 80s UK albums included a single that wasn't originally on it but was released around the same time (ie the US version of Meat is Murder with How Soon is Now? on it, or PC&L getting Blue Monday added)

wow, you haven't heard Love's Easy Tears yet, have you... it's not on Stars and Topsoil

don't think so! it's coming up in another 11 songs or so, though

tbh, though, i have trouble remembering a lot of their song titles. every single one is so bonkers

this narrative is probably too shaped by my own music preferences, but it always seemed like US bands recorded singles only because they couldn't afford to release an album yet, while for UK bands the single was more of an end it itself and they would happily continue releasing them (look at New Order) ... by no means universally true, but it feels that way

xpost

hello pre-Love's Easy Tears Karl Malone

i don't know if this is building it up too much, but i'm going to take a hike to a mountaintop and do some shrooms in the next 50 minutes, and when it gets to Love's Easy Tears i'm going to get ready to level up

For me the EPs+Victorialand are the core/heart music in the stretch between Lullabies and BBK. The EPs are beyond essential, along with this astonishing track (collected in the box, otherwise compilation only)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wgv08gsexfc

i can't believe i'm about to listen to a second track with the word "spangle" in it, on the same comp

you're in the butterfly period... they recorded those EPs to test out their new studio, and weren't originally planning to release them!

my first "Love's Easy Tears" thoughts are that i think i've heard it before! but what's crazy is that i'm not sure if i've heard the real thing or if i've heard the echos of it in other CT songs. but it instantly feels familiar, and an instant favorite for sure

enjoy your new spells!

There was a period in the 80s where bands felt it was ripping fans off to load albums with songs from singles/eps they'd already paid for. Instead they just made more stuff we had to buy!

> The UK seemed to care more about singles than albums in the 80s, too...

i think there's more to it than that - these were very specifically EPs. so you got more music than a 7" single and, importantly given it's 4ad / v23, full size art. and Tiny Dynamine and Echoes in a Shallow Bay were released just two weeks apart - were designed as eps rather than a single album.

i had almost exactly none of them* before the box was released so that was ideal for me. but when i ripped all my cds to flac i overlooked the box completely because it was too fat to shelve with the others.

(* i had the Pearly 7" from years previous and had also bought, i think, iceblink luck that was the most recent release at the time)

Wow, this thread got real good last night, huh. Congratulations on your journey, KM. One of the few musical points of consensus among me and my gf and other musical heads of my acquaintance is that Cocteau Twins are one of the best bands ever, very possibly the best.

Don't sleep on the BBC Sessions! Something of that nature is generally very sleeponable wrt most musical acts but there are versions of songs in that collection which I unaccountably love even more than the studio versions. And yes, all of the EPs are absolutely essential.

I came to the conclusion a few years back that 'Love's Easy Tears' is my favorite of their songs. There's fierce competition but I haven't wavered yet.

The very very tangentially Cocteaus-adjacent band I became obsessed with somewhat recently is Mahogany, which has the Cocteaus-esque distinction of being an act whose discography I've played front-to-back on numerous occasions (an experience I get something fresh + new from every time).

Back in the day (mid 80s) I had heard the name and seen some EPs in a record store in the big city of 200 000 people - I grew up in a rural part of Tasmania which is quite like Vancouver Island for you North Americans. Anyway I bought Tiny Dynamine and when I had picked my jaw off the floor I slowly bought as much of their stuff as I could. BBK was the first new album to come out after I became a fan and of course very hard to find at the far end of the earth (literally). As I pieced it all together the hardest one to find was Love’s Easy Tears and I’ve often wondered if that’s why I liked it the most - interesting to hear the other praise here.
When the EP box came out I had 80% of it on vinyl, but of course CD was the “best” and I sold the vinyl cheap to my friend and spent a week’s rent on the box. Still got it, still glad I bought it (some of the vinyl pressings were terrible).

I'm struggling to remember how I even discovered them. I know Heaven or Las Vegas and Treasure were used bin blind buys around the same time but I can't remember why I was prompted to blind buy them in the first place. At any rate, it was right around the time they released Milk and Kisses so my timing in becoming a Cocteaus fan was quite excellent.

I bought Blue Bell Knoll when it came out, based on a (positive) review I read (I wanna say in the Village Voice?) that described the album as "avant-garde brunch music" or something like that. I just had to see for myself.

like Karl, I always dug 'em when I heard 'em during their prime, but I had a somewhat ill-advised disinclination to listen to english college rock, as I found Depeche Mode/Smiths/ Cure people to be objectionable at the time. And in '94, a coworker at a label I worked for played FCC in the office a lot, and many of those songs stayed with me…

But four years ago, I thought "I'm gonna really check 'em out." And so, during the final year and a half of 30 years as a New York resident, and in the first year of my daughter's life, Cocteaus was key. Evidently Fraser held her and Guthrie's baby while she was recording "Heaven…" and probly going up this thread, I think there is a post from me talking about watching kids gambol in Prospect park while listening to that song or the whole album, thinking that my child is going to do that in a couple years. And one night, I was at the Adirondack bar in windsor terrace with a pal who also likes 'em, and "Iceblink Luck" came on, and goddamn did that sound right…

I got Stars and Topsoil and I noticed that "Orange Appled" has this bell ornamentation that sounds just like that on "Do they Know it's xmas"…must be a synclavier sound… and you guys have reminded that I wanted to listen to Milk and Kisses, which I am doing as I write… pleasant but it does seem they were over it…

I heard "Wax And Wane" on the radio and got Head Over Heels and Sunburst as birthday or Christmas presents in late 1983, Treasure was the first one to come out where I was fully on board and I remember actually reading about it in Maximum Rock And Roll!

Given how sui generis and ahead of their time (or outside of time altogether) they still sound, I can't imagine what it must've been like to have been a contemporaneous fan.

it's funny but Love's Easy Tears and then BBK are what made me lose interest at the time, I only picked up the post-Victorialand records in the last 20 years.

Blue Bell Knoll is still, and will forever be, my favourite CT album ever. And if I absolutely gun-to-head had to pick one song, it'd be 'Itchy Glowbo Blow'.

This is such a bittersweet thing, because I think of this band as so much a band with a watershed.

And I'm kind of jealous of people who come to them as 'getting the whole discography all at once' so they don't have to experience them in a watersheddy way, they can just be "ah, all this stuff is so great!" and see it as a complete set.

Because to me, it was just so much, at the time, like Blue Bell Knoll felt like the end of something. Half of it was amazing - the singles (which I think came out as e.p.s earlier?) were amazing. And the rest of it was so underwhelming. And from then on, they weren't the same band, and it pains me to listen to anything after Love's Easy Tears.

(Maybe this is teenage tribalism, and I should just get over it - like, before BBK they were a weird 4AD band that me and my weird gothy friends loved; and after BBK like my brother and his yuppie mates all got into them and that was awful. I shouldn't hold it against them that their audience changed? But at the same time, every time I play Lullabies to Violane, there is a definite point where I have to get up and stop the music. Oh god I feel like the hater at a love-in now.)

But during that period in the mid-80s when they were amazing, and had such an extraordinary run of fantastic e.p.s and albums, they were utterly untouchable, there was nothing in the world as beautiful as what they did.

I'm glad someone else besides me can hear a difference in the post-Victorialand material

I like it all now (especially HOLV, my god) but at the time it seemed less focused, like some of the edges had been smoothed out

I was a fan at the time as well and I felt the same way as you, but after HoLV. I thought then, and still do now, that HoLV was right up there with the earlier stuff, but FCC was a real nosedive in quality and the rot really set in with M&K.

xp

Heh, for me in the US their deal with Capitol Records meant I could A. buy the album at the nearby mall instead of having to spend all day busing to the cool record stores in Montrose and B. it would only cost $16 instead of $22. I will always have a soft spot for Best Buy because in the early 90s they started selling CDs as loss leaders right when 4AD started their US operation, which meant all the Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance back catalog (and new 4AD stuff) was now available on CD for $9-12 an album!

did the change to using english sentences coincide with the major label (and those horrible covers)? not heard BBK for a while (bought on tape...) but in my memory that's the last good lp.

Four-Calendar Cafe was the watershed (heh) album for being able to understand most of what Fraser was singing.

(they were still on 4AD through Heaven or Las Vegas)

I've always considered HOLV to be their peak. Felt like they were finally entering into the (alternative) mainstream, and you could even understand a few of the lyrics ("Las Vegas", something about burning a playhouse down, etc.) I saw them on that tour, with Galaxie 500, and you could kind of sense that both bands were reaching the end of something. Not that I expected much in the way of onstage animation, but both bands seemed unusually morose.

Am I the only one who thought for years that it was actually Tiny Dynamite?

during the final year and a half of 30 years as a New York resident, and in the first year of my daughter's life, Cocteaus was key. Evidently Fraser held her and Guthrie's baby while she was recording "Heaven…" and probly going up this thread, I think there is a post from me talking about watching kids gambol in Prospect park while listening to that song or the whole album, thinking that my child is going to do that in a couple years.

love this story, veronica. i don't have children, but there is something to that connection that i recognize. it's strange to think about - baby vibes. it's definitely not the pooping and the falling over. but maybe instead it's the weirdness of a baby being the dense center of a lifetime of potential emotions and feelings and memories and heartbreak, still waiting to be formed. so the crying, basically

Mark me down as well that Love's Easy Tears and BBK were effectively the end of my real interest at the time, to the point I couldn't be arsed going through to Glasgow to see them touring BBK.

Actually the Harold Budd album might be what broke the back for a lot of people and the obvious high points of BBK weren't enough to win them back?

It probably wasn't until the BBC Sessions came out I realised what I'd missed out on and rediscovered the late era (because listening to them on the radio at the time didn't click).

Irrespective of the reputation it has built since, my memory of the time is that Treasure was considered a bit of a let down - which, since the releases before it were Sunburst & Snowblind and PDD/Spangle Maker maybe isn't that surprising.

Victorialand was the last one for which Vaughan Oliver/23 Envelope did the cover, so that certainly marked the end of something.

amazing to hear these stories from you all. it's so hard to imagine being let down by Treasure, i mean, that's a greatest hits album!

i think i will always hold a special place for Victorialand, because it is incredibly hard to pull off a catchy pop album with no bass

man, not for me re: Treasure, I listened to that thing every day in early 1985

The only stumbling block I initially had re: Treasure is the drum machine. But still, Treasure more than lives up to its name.

I think the biggest criticism was that the sides started and ended well but sagged in the middle? Trying to remember reviews I read once or maybe twice over 35 years ago.

bought the odd cocteau's single during the 80s after hearing 'orange appled' on a melody maker giveaway single. and as much as i liked those, i really rather took them for granted at the time - they were just always there, releasing cocteau twinsy music. not quite enough rough edges for me as a teen. i go in phases with them now, still never heard anything beyond 'heaven or las vegas' though

Also it's hilarious to me that sleeve read about them in MRR.

it was a Tesco Vee column about his favorite records of the moment! also how I got turned on to Swans "Cop", lol

The only stumbling block I initially had re: Treasure is the drum machine.

when i think about it, i think the stumbling block for enjoying their music was also the drums, but not specifically the drum machine (or Treasure), just the 80s drum production in general. the smiths, the replacements, cocteau twins - for a long time i kind of nodded along to all of them but found the production too distracting. at some point, though, several years ago, i finally got used to that sound and it was no longer an obstacle.

and truth be told, a gated drum can sound really good in the right conditions (like the cocteau twins catalog)

my cocteaus origin story is probably not that unique—

was working at a used music store where i was solely responsible for section maintenance of all vinyl stock. i was just turned 20 at the time and had been a hiphop head most of my life. while working my way through the stacks, i would encounter these bands that had rather large sections and which i had never heard of — bands like blue oyster cult, the jam, yes, etc. huge names obviously, but i didn't know them. the cocteaus had one of the largest sections in the whole store and i was mystified by this group i had never even heard of that had a shit ton of records and no photos of the band on any them — what was this??? employees were allowed to use the store's stock as a library of sorts, so before weekends, i'd go into one of these sections and grab six or seven records to listen to on my days off. if i liked them enough, i'd buy two or three of the records and make a mixtape of the highlights of the rest. when i did that with the cocteaus, i think the first thing i put on after getting home that friday night was sunburst and snowblind and i have rarely experienced a feeling like that: a simultaneous feeling of "WHAT THE HELL IS THIS??" and "WHY DO I LIKE THIS????"

good times.

i also worked in a used music store when i was 20, but i was too busy dealing the manager's insistence that kasabian and keane were the best bands of the moment to explore any good music

it was a Tesco Vee column about his favorite records of the moment! also how I got turned on to Swans "Cop", lol

I'm surprised, no shocked, that the guy from screeching weasel didn't write an angry letter of complaint about this

I had a manager who didn't actually like Bo Bice but thought I was not being fair in refusing to listen to him or take him seriously as an artist

xp I heard them first in college radio rotation and mentally filed them with other 4AD/gothy bands I wasn't into in the early 80s ... they were too dreamy and ambient at a time I wanted loud and fast

much later, after they'd broken up, I bought a CD or two that got a lot of play at home, they become one of a few bands that my wife and I both love, over time we got copies of all the studio albums and the EP compilations and the BBC Sessions, and we continue to play the whole discography so much we have to take breaks sometimes to keep from wearing it out

xp NickB I actually wrote in a vehement defense/response to his famous complaint letter about Sonic Youth et al!! I think they printed it. We exchanged a letter after that and agreed to disagree iirc

Haha amazing! Scans please! (on the relevant thread of course)

to the point I couldn't be arsed going through to Glasgow to see them touring BBK

lol I hummed and hawed about that gig for weeks (as I was round about the same "get off the bus" phase as you and Branwell) and it didn't sell out so I decided to turn up on the night to pay at the door. It turned out they'd guestlisted so many people they hit capacity and we couldn't get in.
We spent the night listening to an old guy singing folk songs in the Tolbooth.

Keep seeing BBK and thinking you all mean Boy Better Know, someone get liz on the next skepta record plz

Oh shit, it finally just clicked. My 'in' re: Cocteau Twins was three-fold: a) I was way into Lush in the mid-'90s and became aware at some point of who was responsible for the sound of Spooky, b) I was becoming more aware of 4AD as a label shared by a number of latter-day and not particularly '4AD-ish' 4AD acts that I liked (Breeders, Lisa Germano, etc.), and c) I used to drive around at night listening to this syndicated radio show Echoes (which I guess still exists!) and that featured a weird melange of electronic and experimental and world and new age music and I'm almost certain that was where I first actually heard CT.

I think I listened to all the albums and Lullabies To Violane in the space of half a year in 2004/2005. Couldn't stop myself, needed it.

so can we re-do the entire cocteau twins ballot poll now please? (only half jk)

We could do a Lullabies to Violaine poll

I had a quiet pint in the East Hill pub in Wandsworth on Monday afternoon, trying to summon the ghost of Vaughan Oliver (it's directly opposite 17-19 Alma Rd, which is Beggars Group now, so still technically 4AD I guess, but back in the day it really was just 4AD). I like to imagine I sat at the table where he came up with the Xmal Deutschland logo, or the Come On Pilgrim concept, etc. I listened to I Am The Crime by Wolfgang Press as I walked along St John's Hill towards Clapham but I just couldn't make it 1986.

So, yeah, BBK forever. It's the first one I heard, and it's the best.

ha, and the first without VO artwork!
For me the Cocteaus break in three: debut to LET (high Cocteaus), BBK/HOLV (joyous pop Cocteaus) and then post 4AD whatever

Good thread revival and hurrah for Karl realizing why the EPs are urgent and key.

How DID I first hear them? Pretty sure it might have been a mention or two in the 3rd edition of Trouser Press plus starting work at KLA at UCLA in 1989. Also a vinyl copy of Treasure was added to the collection around that time -- found an import CD soon after and that was that, off to the races by early 1990 (which helped as well when "Soon" was released soon thereafter but I digress). Happily it all meant that I was so utterly soaked in the band that by the time of HOLV I was there from the first single on -- in fact now that I think about it, the very first issue of Melody Maker I ever picked up was the cover story when "Iceblink Luck" came out! Still have the issue! And saw them in December of that year with Lush opening, that was a double bill and a half.

Anyway, realizing I never added it to this thread in particular when it ran, here's me in the Guardian a few years back on ten of their best. Don't question me, I am biased and I am right.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2016/feb/24/cocteau-twins-10-of-the-best

re: cover art on BBK

well, it's by Paul West, who worked with VO... not like they went with Hipgnosis or something

Oh, I think I may have bought the Doom Generation soundtrack before any Cocteaus albums proper, so 'Summerblink' may have been the first song I heard of theirs that I identified as a Cocteau Twins song.

as we mentioned on another recent Cocteaus thread, don't overlook their lost song (appearing nowhere else!) from the Judge Dredd soundtrack:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMECJspGCcU

4AD meets 2000 AD

The drum intro from Persephone was an advert earlier this year.

the thread that I posted in 2 years ago that I was referring to is the dedicated HoLV thread…and I also asked therein: what are the antecedents of this band? I read somewhere that as high-haired scottish late teens/20 somethings, they were way into Siouxie… and that they collaborated with Harold Budd suggests that they had an interest in minimalist composition…but I have a harder time intuiting what they must have been into initially for inspiration than I do peers like, say, MBV…would they have been into the Berlin Trilogy? and I guess Fraser likes Tim Buckley…lemme know them thoughts…

WARNING: DRUG EXPERIENCE POST
I was in my college dorm room with just my roomie/best friend. I'd taken a hit of acid and it wasn't working. Few days before I'd bought some from same guy which also didn't work, so he gave me 5 hits for free and said they work, but sorry I guess they're pretty weak. So I'm like fuck it and eat the remaining 4 tabs. As you could guess, I start tripping balls and am worried I'll have a bad trip (which is what happened the only other time I tripped hard). I knew if anything could prevent that and calm me down, it'd be Cocteau Twins. Put on "Evangeline" (this was when FCC was my go to CT). To this day I haven't felt the sort of blissful serenity that hearing that song instantly gave me. Felt like the whole universe was gently happily swaying to the tune in a hazy under the sea sort of way blah blah I'll spare you the rest of the drug trip talk.

Oh I feel you. Cocteau Twins are DEEPLY psychedelic, and hearing the Love's Easy Tears EP and Blue Bell Knoll back to back on acid is one of my favorite musical experiences ever. I will also refrain from any further drug-induced raving haha

xxp believe it or not they were brought together, and signed to 4AD, by their love of The Birthday Party. I suppose the only sonic link is Robin’s “metal sheets” guitar sound.

Am I the only one who thought for years that it was actually Tiny Dynamite?

Until you pointed it out, I thought it was Dynamite!

Karl, don't forget to check out their two tracks from the first This Mortal Coil album. They're kind of tossed off, instrumentally, but absolutely essential because they're a showcase for Liz being Liz.

Karl have you heard the Xmas songs??

Robin Guthrie once said as a retort to the idea that he was so original that Jimi Hendrix was doing this kind of thing before him. Hendrix was a huge influence on Robert Smith too.

I didn't hear anything especially Cocteau-esque on Electric Ladyland so I'd like to know if there is a better link elsewhere.

I'd say the scraping, fried sounds on e.g. "1983" are very similar to early Cocteaus textures.

i guess simple minds would've been an influence seeing as how they took their name from the title of one of their songs. can't remember that many simple minds tunes that sound that much like the cocteaus though, this is the nearest i can think of:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD8PIOQo8Po

brian eno and kate bush seem like more relevant forebears

lol uh I'm just gonna say that "Oomingmak" sounded real good to a young frying sleeve once upon a time, everyone else otm with those stories

Karl, don't forget to check out their two tracks from the first This Mortal Coil album. They're kind of tossed off, instrumentally, but absolutely essential because they're a showcase for Liz being Liz.

― I want to luhbahguh babum gum (Leee), Wednesday, October 14, 2020 5:34 PM (five hours ago)bookmarkflaglink

Karl have you heard the Xmas songs??

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Wednesday, October 14, 2020 6:23 PM (four hours ago)

thank you, i will, and no i haven't! i feel like scrooge mcduck in his moneychamber, i really do.

blue bell knoll (BBK) is maybe my new favorite. i bounce around. treasure is what it claims to be, and i haven't forgotten about HOLV. uuuuuuugh

"Cico Buff" at intense volumes is enough to...listen, i don't work out. but i feels like a deep lift

*it!

good lord, here i am again with Suckling the Mender, holy shit

can we do a full Cocteau poll again? Suckling the Mender, it's in my top 5. this is like Dead Can Dance's best moments, only all of the time

Xmas songs??

so, i will say, yes, i very much want to hear these, but also that i very much hate christmas and songs related to christmas, unless it's silent night, vince guaraldi, low, and people making fun of christmas. and even then, only the week around christmas itself, and definitely not in november. certainly not in october. however, i still want to hear whatever these songs are, later!

real talk: their Frosty the Snowman is transcendent but Winter Wonderland kinda sucks

i am definitely going to wait until christmas eve for that - i can't stand either of those songs

fuck christmas. i am the enemy of christmas that fox news warns about

i will take christmas and transform it into the nightmare of santa claus

although the Snow EP is notable because they never do covers... only other one is Strange Fruit from the BBC Sessions, I think

Frosty the Snowman is the most alt-rock Christmas song, it sounds all happy but it's about knowing you will melt to death

well that does kinda sound nice :)

Frosty the Snowman knew the sun was hot that day

don't forget this lovely tidbit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFO7PxMiwe4

I started listening to CT as a teenage Cure fan, after I read in an interview that Robert Smith liked them. I got Victorialand for Christmas and I still remember putting it on the record player at the wrong speed and loving it. Then I realized it was supposed to be played at 45 (still don't know why or if other LPs like that exist), and it sounded even better! Worked my way back the catalog and fell in love with everything. Especially the EPs which I really had to track down.

Blue Bell Knoll seemed a bit formulaic when it came out compared to the rest, but HOLV totally brought them back. I still can't get into 4CC save for a few songs and Milk and Kisses is a good album although a bit going through the motions.

Still probably my favorite band of all time. I had a great time doing the poll a couple of years ago and it made me hear BBK in a new light.
Cups of POLLy-Dewdrops' Drops -- ILM Artist Poll #35 -- The COCTEAU TWINS results thread

LeRoo was that interview in CREEM? If so, exact same here!

Started working on the EPs as a result of this thread revive.

it's the chocolate, it's the chocolate on my to-ooth

ok, if i were to, i don't know, blow a bunch of my paycheck on some cocteau twins LPs, which releases should i look for, try to avoid, notoriously bad pressings, etc?

for example, did anyone get the 4AD reissue of Victorialand this year?
https://www.discogs.com/Cocteau-Twins-Victorialand/release/14941059

and for Blue Bell Knoll, i guess the most recent reissue was 2014? anyone have that one?
https://www.discogs.com/Cocteau-Twins-Blue-Bell-Knoll/release/5883381

for the eps, was there ever any sort of Lullabies To Violaine-esque collection on vinyl? "i don't even own a CD player"

sadly, no. but there is this great Canadian twofer of Tiny Dynamine and Echoes for $35:

https://www.discogs.com/sell/item/826703464

this is a pretty good deal but it doesn't have 'The Spangle Maker' a 7" for $14

https://www.discogs.com/sell/item/1182030935

this also seems like a good deal? Peppermint Pig 12" for $17

https://www.discogs.com/sell/item/1183618315

everything else on vinyl in USD looks a bit scary pricewise for OGs

as per your links above, yes to BBK and no to Victorialand, looks like the latter has a lot of bad pressings

sadly, no. but there is this great Canadian twofer of Tiny Dynamine and Echoes for $35:

it is mine.

:D

Nice work. I have one of those Canadian Vertigo pressings that has the Treasure LP and the Aikea-Guinea EP packaged with it, sounds great.

and then i also bought the peppermint pig 12", as well as the pink opaque ($20). i did it!

i'll probably just pick up the BBK reissue, then, and hold off on victorialand. (but i adore victorialand)

the pink opaque i only got because it was from the same seller as the peppermint pig. i'm in collector mode so i know i'm going to end up getting them all anyway, but the pink opaque will tide me over in the meantime

I'd kind of love to be listening to some of these right now but a friend's funeral during lockdown closed with Domino and I can't bring myself to.

LeRoo was that interview in CREEM? If so, exact same here!

I think it was in French mag Les Inrockuptibles, but thanks Robert!!

good call on The Pink Opaque as well, that way you get "Millimillenary" and all of The Spangle Maker 12"

(xpost to Karl)

Very sorry about that Aldo. Hopefully that song can bring you joy again and remind you of your friend. (x-post)

My CT drug story: listening to the EPs box set on NYE 1991 while out of my mind on LSD in my bedroom, very specifically "quisquose"....there is a bit in it, which is transcribed on the internet as "Quise qualledo qualledo quallido quallido do do do do au
a Rococo au oahoo"

at that precise moment, it was like the fabric of reality was unraveled in glowing ribbons. Dunno if I ever recovered.

Darvon + Victorialand made for some lovely evenings

what are the antecedents of this band? I read somewhere that as high-haired scottish late teens/20 somethings, they were way into Siouxie… and that they collaborated with Harold Budd suggests that they had an interest in minimalist composition…but I have a harder time intuiting what they must have been into initially for inspiration than I do peers like, say, MBV…would they have been into the Berlin Trilogy? and I guess Fraser likes Tim Buckley…lemme know them thoughts…

From their website:

The band members have cited among their influences such artists as Patsy Cline, Roy Orbison, The Ronettes, and the Beach Boys, and reminiscences of these can be heard in the thick textures and melodies of Love's Easy Tears. Loud and trebled guitar roar and chime over thumping drums and a dancing bass and, of course—that voice—which pierces the colorful washes of sound with candy-coated choruses and howls of non-specificity.

howls of non-specificity

working title for Smile

been a while since I had a DN, thanks

let me just check out the allmusic review for the pink opaque, written by one..let's see...ned raggett? never heard of him. but ned says " The version of Garlands' "Wax and Wane" included here is slightly remixed and arguably even better than the original, bringing out everything a little more clearly and powerfully.", and to that i say YESSSSSS, because i love the original

Also the only release you can find Millimillenary on, I think?

it seems that when i set off to purchase cocteau twins records, i can do no wrong!

Yup. Also I have no idea who that guy is.

ned otm about the pink opaque version of wax and wane. i’m biased because it’s the first way i heard it

Anyway I'm pleased to see that the legendary Great Pop Things strip on how the band came to be is still easily found:

https://wewillhavesalad.files.wordpress.com/2016/03/cocte.jpg?w=768&h=256

bc of this thread i listened to treasure for the first time and holy shit lorelai, i knew i remembered it from somewhere and it was sampled by the field

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0aI6CJHqKs

which if i had bothered to listen to this on youtube years ago i wouldve learned sooner, but o well

I don’t agree with whatever ppl think Treasure lags in the middle, nfw

Treasure has great stuff but I am kind of done with it, after 30+ years, in a way that I’m not done with other stuff of theirs.

Anyway, this Sunday:

For Cocteau Twins lovers everywhere and even those of you who are curious, I am hosting a @LlSTENlNG_PARTY for our '93 lp Four-Calendar Cafe on Sunday 10pm 18th October (Uk time) so please join me for some music and stories to boot..... pic.twitter.com/FjMJWhmg0e

— mrsimonraymonde (@mrsimonraymonde) October 16, 2020

Abbey and I visited THE four-calendar canteen in CT’s honour in Bandung, Indonesia a couple of years and met some AMAZING CT fans. Here is a photo abbey took pic.twitter.com/6zgI5J74Xn

— mrsimonraymonde (@mrsimonraymonde) October 18, 2020

most of my cocteau binge came in yesterday and this morning!

tiny dynamine/echoes in a shallow bay 2-fer
the pink opaque
peppermint pig

the dynamine/echoes compilation is great. i have another release by Vertigo, a comp of Kraftwerk 1 and 2, that is similarly excellent quality. i especially love the dynamine ep, out of the two. on a scale of warm hue combos, i am going to give this release 2 oranges, 2 pinks, and 1 red.

peppermint pig 12", i need to listen to it again, but i remember thinking that i liked the songs on the b-side ("laugh lines" and "hazel") a bit more than the single. i'll give it 1 orange, and 2 pinks, due to the pig theme.

the pink opaque is an instant favorite record for me, even though it's a comp. i think i love every goddamn song on there, and i've played it 5-6 times since i got it yesterday. 8 pinks, 4 purples, and 1 red.

the most reissue of blue bell knoll is on its way to my apartment tomorrow. :D

btw, i haven't allowed myself the luxury of reading through LBI's cocteau twins poll. i want to wait juuuust a bit longer, until i have a better grasp on garlands and head over heels. then i can scroll through the rollout with maximum fandom. can't wait!

so happy for you! Head Over Heels was the first LP I got of theirs and in many ways is my favorite.

another simple luxury that i'm going to partake in at this very moment: I AM READING THE WHOLE WIKIPEDIA ENTRY. here we go.

(Fraser had Siouxsie tattoos on her arms for several years).[13]

amazing what a simple use of past tense can add

did not know that!

Chapman, Rob (July 1998). "Dark Side of the Spliff: Massive Attack". Mojo. "Have you met Liz?" 3D splutters with laughter. "[...] She loved our Siouxsie and the banshees sample off ‘Metal Postcard’ — she’d just had this Siouxsie and the Banshees tattoo removed from her arm.
King, Richard (2012). How Soon is Now?: The Madmen and Mavericks who made Independent Music 1975-2005. Faber & Faber. ISBN 0571243908. Colin Wallace, their friend, confident and roadie has come from the same background as Fraser; Heggie and Gutrhie. [...] he says, '[...] Elisabeth was a huge Siouxsie fan - she had Siouxsie tattoos which she's had lasered off since'.

to be fair, Siouxsie was huge in the pre-Cocteau postpunk scene, 1978-1980

over on the this mortal coil wikipedia entry:

One of the label's earliest signings was Modern English. In 1983, Watts-Russell suggested that the band re-record two of its earliest songs, "Sixteen Days" and "Gathering Dust", as a medley. At the time, the band was closing its set with this medley, and Watts-Russell felt it was strong enough to warrant a re-recording. When the band rebuffed the idea, Watts-Russell decided to assemble a group of musicians to record the medley: Elizabeth Fraser and Robin Guthrie of Cocteau Twins; Cindy Sharp of Cindytalk; and a few members of Modern English.[6] An EP, Sixteen Days/Gathering Dust, resulted from these sessions. A cover of Tim Buckley's "Song to the Siren", performed by Fraser and Guthrie alone, was recorded as a B-side for the EP. Pleased with the results, Watts-Russell decided to make this the A-side of the 7" single version of the EP, and the song quickly became an underground hit, leading Watts-Russell to pursue the recording of a full album under the This Mortal Coil moniker, 1984's It'll End in Tears.[6]

i didn't realize that the "song to the siren" cover was so key to the whole this mortal coil origin story! it's also, so it seems, where they met Simon Raymonde. damn. sometimes, when you got it, you got it

ya gotta hear her do Roy Harper's "Another Day" on the 1st TMC album, dear god in heaven it is one of the most heartrendingly beautiful things I have ever heard

I also love "16 Days", so badass, wailing banshee action

is there a version of 16 days by itself, or is it always combined with gathering dust?

always combined (although you can split them with a WAV editor), the original 7" just had the "reprise" as the B-side:

https://www.discogs.com/This-Mortal-Coil-Song-To-The-Siren/release/91768

(I have never heard the Modern English original)

On 31 January 2005, Cocteau Twins announced that they would be reforming to perform at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on 30 April 2005, and later indicated that additional tour dates would be added. However on 16 March, the reunion was cancelled after Fraser announced that she would not take part. In a 2009 interview, Fraser said she could not go through the pain of sharing the stage with her former lover Guthrie, the issue behind the band's 1997 breakup.[22] Raymonde revealed that the band had also booked a 55-date world tour, which would have paid him £1.5 million.[9]

lol, raymonde was like "can you two pleeeeeease just do a temporary truce, whatever this is"

WAIT - that's elizabeth fraser on Mezzanine?!?!!

jfc

i loved mezzanine so much. it was one of the first CDs i ever bought. amazing.

half the world has heard liz fraser, because Teardrop is the theme song to house

half the world has heard liz fraser, because Teardrop is the theme song to house

i'm sure a lot of people have thought - gedda load-of-those pipes!

they should have used Inertia Creeps for that show

it totally makes sense, though. i loved 'teardrop' so much that i always made it my mixtape/cd representation of massive attack, for my friends. one song per artist, obviously.

"Gathering Dust" is the other great postpunk song with a laser battle in it, along with Joy Division's "Insight".

Except the cut of "Teardrop" for House doesn't have Liz! (in the versions I've seen, maybe there's a longer cut)

the world is stupid

i didn't realize that the "song to the siren" cover was so key to the whole this mortal coil origin story! it's also, so it seems, where they met Simon Raymonde. damn. sometimes, when you got it, you got it

― president of my cat (Karl Malone), Thursday, October 22, 2020 8:23 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Martin Aston's 4AD book is a treasure trove of info like this. And there's a lot of Cocteau Twins content in that tome iirc. I came away with a new appreciation for 4AD after reading it despite not really caring about half of the label's output

threw Pink Opaque on last night, albeit in the background, and rediscovered Aikea Guinea, Wax and Wane and Hitherto. but some other tracks weren't as good as i remembered them (or weren't memorable)

Aston book is great *but* it outrageously names the pub over the road from 4AD as the Slug & Lettuce. Come on, man, that chain didn't exist until '85. No way no damn Xmal Deutschland logo was designed in a Slug & Lettuce. :) (It was definitely a S&L for all of the '90s).

(Actually, 4AD-haters are probably very amused by the parallels with that much-maligned chain of airy, spacious, stripped-pine bars.)

I believe Millimillenary was the first thing Simon R and Robin G wrote together, late '83. One of my faves on Pink O.

I remembered last night that I am legally obligated to post this 1985 news report every time this thread is revived

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaOlNfC8_xQ

^^ it's in my YT faves like, ten times

lol, thank you for that. love the newsteam touching their hair at the end there

to be fair, Siouxsie was huge in the pre-Cocteau postpunk scene, 1978-1980

I love that the same post punk Siousxie adoration that produced the Cocteaus somehow produced Altered Images.

I read somewhere (maybe the Martin Aston 4AD book) that when Ivo first heard the Cocteaus it was on such a shitty quality demo tape that he couldn't even hear Liz's voice but he was intrigued by the guitar sound and he asked them to come and play. So Liz Frazer was something of an unexpected bonus!

Yay Cocteau fever !

WAIT - that's elizabeth fraser on Mezzanine?!?!!

Was she ever. Last year's Massive Attack tour focused on that album -- a remarkable presentation -- featured her and over twenty-five years after I last saw her on the Four Calendar Cafe tour -- where she was clearly not in the best of headspaces -- seeing her just gently/regally appear and do her two songs was so remarkable. I've been casual friends with the Chavis brothers from the Veldt for many years and they got to know Robin and Liz when Robin produced an unreleased album by them in 1990, and they met up with her backstage at one of the East Coast dates of the tour and the photos they posted and the memories made it clear they were very happy to see her again and vice versa, and that she's in good spirits. I value that very, very highly.

the idea of Liz having Siouxsie tats, and then having them removed, threw me into a lengthy reverie yesterday

well this thread got me to finally check out This Mortal Coil and ... honestly, Ned, I'm angry that you didn't push me toward them earlier.

jeez next you'll be telling us you've never heard Love's Easy Tears

xpost I can’t help it if you don’t follow my every word of wisdom. *sighs dramatically* But more seriously, better late than never, and now you know. I can always play Filigree and Shadow at a moment’s notice. But It’ll End in Tears I need to be in a place for.

xp well um

WELL

The Spangle Maker: FUCK YEAH

otm

― sleeve, Tuesday, October 13, 2020 10:37 PM (one week ago)

this song has ruined music. we're done here

In a moment of synchronicity, I am reading the collection of Grim Humour 1-10 that's just come out (and I recommend to you all) and #10 had a review of the Cocteau Twins show from 28th October 86.

It ends with the question "by the way, was that a tattoo of Siouxsie I saw on Liz Frazer's shoulder?"

But the review itself supports some of our period claims from above - "I've always liked the Cocteau Twins but on this live performance... well, they were boring, tiring, pretentious charmless... I found it all rather sad to be honest. This once fine band have burnt themselves out already. As John Peel once put it "they seem to have decayed into the bowels of their own beauty" and never a truer word was spoken."

A friend of mine saw them in 1990 and found it lifeless. It's hard to be spontaneous when you're a trio playing highly arranged songs backed by a drum machine.

I would definitely not expect to be knocked out by a live performance by this band

As John Peel once put it "they seem to have decayed into the bowels of their own beauty"

if you're gong to decay into bowels, though, what a way to go

Does anybody like the song "I Wear Your Ring," because I'm trying to work on a piano arrangement for this song and I'm worried that's it's too simple or something. It has three distinct melodies, so that's a plus. Maybe I could add something rhythmically in the left hand... I like the conga rhythm it starts with, maybe I could integrate that into the sections where there's not much going on.

A friend of mine saw them in 1990 and found it lifeless. It's hard to be spontaneous when you're a trio playing highly arranged songs backed by a drum machine.

I'm curious, where was this? One reason I like Cocteau Twin tapes from this era is the mixing is so strange. The engineers always seemed to mix the drum machines (e.g. TR-808) super loud so they bang like it was the club.

A good example from 1990:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijDrNshmn2c

skip to Cherry Coloured Funk (39:07).

Except the cut of "Teardrop" for House doesn't have Liz! (in the versions I've seen, maybe there's a longer cut)

I, embarrassingly, watched every episode of House. They would occasionally use the album version for dramatic scenes.

The concert was in Massey Hall in Toronto, which was built in 1894, and so the acoustics probably aren't ideal for making the drum machines bang like it was the club.

At Liverpool Royal Court in Oct '90, I just wanted them to turn the guitars UP. From where I was stood (near the back, late arrival) it was a hesitant wash, and it never really got going. But then, I'd seen Ride in Sheffield the previous night, my ears were probably blitzed from that (and I'd also slept in the station and had a ridiculously stressful journey to Merseyside involving two replacement buses).

They were much better in Wolverhampton and Warrington in '94. (Warrington is also where EFC hero Pat Nevin got me backstage and I had a brief fanboy chat with Liz, and a much less embarrassing encounter with members of Moose).

_WAIT - that's elizabeth fraser on Mezzanine?!?!!_


Was she ever. Last year's Massive Attack tour focused on that album -- a remarkable presentation -- featured her and over twenty-five years after I last saw her on the _Four Calendar Cafe_ tour -- where she was clearly not in the best of headspaces -- seeing her just gently/regally appear and do her two songs was so remarkable. I've been casual friends with the Chavis brothers from the Veldt for many years and they got to know Robin and Liz when Robin produced an unreleased album by them in 1990, and they met up with her backstage at one of the East Coast dates of the tour and the photos they posted and the memories made it clear they were very happy to see her again and vice versa, and that she's in good spirits. I value that very, very highly.

Robin produced an unreleased album by them in 1990

Are Apollo Heights (following on from The Veldt) finished? I completely missed their second album The Killer Of Sheep, but nobody actually seems to own it, so it must be unreleased?

Okay, they're The Veldt again now with two new EPs
https://theveldtmusic.bandcamp.com/
and an unreleased album called Resurrection Hymns. So the Chaivs Brothers have 3 unreleased albums? Killer Of Sheep was said to be their darkest thing yet.

Chavis Brothers, sorry.

https://www.facebook.com/VeldtThe/posts/3473214679401355?__tn__=-R
Still trying to release that first album!

right on

Toured with Seefeel last year and are working on a "vinyl" album now.

I'm still very, very annoyed that due to pure chance in planning, I missed both the Veldt playing in SF for the first time in forever the other year -- and the following week also missed the last Monkees tour as such for Good Times where the date I could have seen in Monterey was one of the very few Mike showed up at since he lives in the Carmel Valley. Had I reversed some dates on my end somehow I could have seen both!

An understandably disjointed but entertaining potted history of the Cocteaus, 4AD and various associated acts...

https://arcane-delights.com/2020/12/15/cocteau-twins-4ad-the-mary-chain-other-stories-an-interview-with-colin-wallace/

Cocteau Twins, 4AD, The Mary Chain & Other Stories – An Interview with Colin Wallace

Now desperately need to hear Liz Frazer singing ‘Baggy Trousers’.

What a great piece. Receiving these records on the other side of the world I thought it was all the work of gods, it’s hilarious to hear the real stories.

Yes, really enjoyed that! Thanks for sharing

i've been listening to all those eps SOOOOOO much this year. thanks for sharing that article, and thanks to many itt for pointing me in the right direction with the pair of cocteau musicians that make up the group <3

let me be clear: my cocteau twins fever has not resided. it has not faded away. no. in fact, it has only grown stronger, more interconnected, reinforced stronger still. i feel that i now have a strong handle on the 2 musicians that formed the pair, those two, those cocteau twins. up through Heaven or Las Vegas. I have actually never listened to them after that, to my knowledge.

i also now realize that the archetypal "ep band" was cocteau twins. the idea of a band putting lots of good shit on the eps, hard to find in a record shop, you gotta import it, etc - that's cocteau twins

will someone please call me out on my cocteau twins are only two musicians gag, it's holding me down and i need help eradicating it

please, someone tell me i was the first to think of it too

soooooo if the Cocteau Twins are two musicians then why did Harold Budd dedicate 'Flowered Knife Shadows' to Simon Raymonde

just tryin' to help

+ searched for saint who posted 'need-fire' to thread in recent months - many thanks

I fictionally tagged it as track 11 of 'Milk And Kisses' just to hear it more

will someone please call me out on my cocteau twins are only two musicians gag, it's holding me down and i need help eradicating it

Well, you are right regarding Head Over Heels and Victorialand. (Sorry.)

Sorry, I can't, Jerry & Debby Cocteau were in fact a magnificent musical duo.

just a check-in: i STILL have cocteau fever, and i'm beginning to think it's more like a chronic condition that i don't want to go away. but somehow, i held off on listening to anything after Heaven or Las Vegas, until today.

the album: Four-Calendar Cafe
the songs i thought were pretty good: "know who you are at every age", "evangeline"
the one i think is an all-time cocteau twins classic, and if i ever am in a diner and hear some wiseacre threatening his significant other by making fun of late cocteau twins and suggesting there's nothing there to find, i might walk over and be like "hey buddy, you're fucking wrong about that. the song is "PUR". google it sometime. it kicks ass. and now i'm about to kick YOUR ass", etc etc

but yeah, "pur" is the one for me. getting ready to do some milk & kisses

"violaine" fucking rules

OH SHIT!

"lullabies to violaine"...so that's why. ok. wait, does this mean that cocteau twins lyrics are supposed to make sense or reference anything tangible? because i'm not ready for this change

continued first impressions: milk & kisses is really good! was not expecting that. i don't know the band lore or what happened to liz or label stuff. i have the perception that people tend to drop off after las vegas, and there is a definite inflection point in their sound, before and after. but damn, some of milk & kisses really rules.

also, "sixteen days / gathering dust" rules. on a song-per-song basis, album/ep/mortal coil/harold buddin' around/house theme song, the consistent level of quality is astounding. they were either really prolific and good self-editing, or only played brilliant music, all the time. it's one of those. either way, well done, twins!

Milk and Kisses IS very good, Rilkean Heart*, Eperdu, and Seekers Who Are Lovers are all-time Cocteau tracks. But yeah, it can be a little odd in the latterdays when you can make out most of what she's singing.

*The little piano version of this on the Twinlights EP is also awesome

what's the deal with Four-Calendar Cafe? even the title?!

"The album took its title from William Least Heat-Moon's book Blue Highways, in which the author considers the quality of a restaurant by how many calendars it has hanging on its wall."

that's cool, but garlands, head over heels, treasure, victorialand, the moon and the melodies, blue bell knoll, heaven or las vegas, FOUR-CALENDAR CAFE

I always thought Heaven or Las Vegas was the odd one out

That one is kinda weird, it’s true

I adore Heaven or Las Vegas and Milk and Kisses but have never been able to get with FCC – the tunes, the lyrics you can understand or the production even.

Same. Except for "Pur". That is top tier Cocteau.

Four-Calendar Cafe is better than Garlands

i need to spend more time with both, but i looooved garlands on first listen, from the first note

“know who you are from every age” and “summerhead” are my favs from FCC

I fell hard for Four Calendar Cafe a couple years ago after neglecting it for a long time. Theft, and Wandering Around Lost is the major highlight for me—definitely a top 10 Cocteaus song. Also I think Four Calendar Cafe is only marginally more intelligible lyrically than Heaven or Las Vegas

I agree, my favourites are "Theft and wandering around lost" and "Oil of angels". The surface is very demure yet the feelings go deep. In "Theft", the whole structure is just a setup for the key changes at 2.53 and again at the very last chord, keeping the emotions on an even keel until they break out.

f.hazel that's easily disproven when one considers that *nothing* is better than Garlands

Garlands is the one I always return to, can't get enough of the sound of it. Peppermint Pig 12" too.

this has been your Sunday evening Cocteaus challops service

you should of heard the sound my monocle made as it hit the floor

I link Four-Calendar Cafe inextricably with December 1993, when I had it in heavy rotation and we decorated our apartment with mountains of Christmas lights, which had of late become extremely cheap and colorful.

My Cocteaus fandom is a bit like BradNelson's approach to music, whichever one I am listening to at the time is the best ever made.
But Garlands is special to me, it was hard to find back in 80s Australia and felt like my first "deep" album purchase.

Ok after re-listening to both albums this morning, I can confirm that Four-Calendar Cafe is every bit as good as Heaven or Las Vegas, which I suppose is my biggest Cocteaus-related challop. xp I feel you with those Christmas lights; this music is a perfect soundtrack to the blizzard that's raging here in NYC right now. Such powerful Winter Wonderland vibes

I want to have Cocteau Fever at that intensity, I really do. But Heaven or Las Vegas is pretty much flawless (like almost everything they releases in the 1980s, it seems)

altho it itself is a 1990 release
I’m not even going to rise to the 4CC challop

i'm still new here and this is probably not 100% true, but i think it's very possible that Heaven or Las Vegas actually ENDED the 1980s. i mean, it was already 1990, true, but Heaven perfected the entire decade of the 1980s, showing that there was no point in going down that path, especially because of all the 90s calendars that had been already been printed

Four of them, even

Zach that is a pretty useful conceit, although it came out later in 1990 as I recall. What a joy it was to get home from the record shop and cue that album up. Same year as MBV's Tremolo I think, it was pretty clear this was forever music.

'4CC' and 'Milk & Kisses' are fantastic. 'Calfskin Smack,' 'Treasure Hiding,' 'Know Who You Are At Every Age,' 'Squeeze-Wax' *chef's kiss*

Tremolo was early 91. Trust me, I know.

Glider, 1990, yes.

Tremolo was early 91. Trust me, I know.

hope yr getting your (gulp) 30th anniversary piece ready ned!

xxp lol Ned

HoLV was Sep 17 '90, Tremolo was Feb 4 '91 (30y tomorrow!). I also don't have to look these dates up, seems like every Monday morning I was in a record shop back then ;)

Trust me, I know.

― Ned Raggett

i am going on hunger strike until this exact text is the new board description.

"The Ark of the Covenant"
"Are you sure?"
"Pretty sure"

man i'm hungry

fucken starvin

sugar hiccup bah cheerios

I mentioned this on another thread but I scored a set of the 80s singles recently and they sound SO MUCH BETTER than lullabies to violaine omg. It’s nice when you turn up a CD and actually hear more detail and not just ear bleeding mush.

u mean the 10CD box? god I love that thing

brims—

we have the original uk cd version of head over heels + sunburst and snowblind and yes: dynamics! i know some people complain about some of those albums being too shrill on the cd mastering, but i never understood the mindset that louder = better.

something something loudness wars.

also i didn't eat breakfast this morning.

again.

Chris Ott wrote like 1200 words about the mastering on these things for Pitchfork when they were reissued.

IRONIC

wait, what

Listened to Need-Fire today, don't forget about Need-Fire guys.

A little fun trivia just now on Twitter

I can’t be sure but think this was the 1st time Quisquose ~a song we wrote in 1985 for the Aikea-Guinea EP~ has ever been heard on the BBC in its 36 years. What is unique about this is that Robin & I both played 6 string basses, me an Ibanez he a Fender https://t.co/TYYIq5y2PC

— mrsimonraymonde (@mrsimonraymonde) June 9, 2021

https://twitter.com/mrsimonraymonde/status/1402459951478476801

Whoops, don't know why the second one didn't take

https://twitter.com/mrsimonraymonde/status/1402459951478476801

Ah okay he replaced it with an edit:

Remember we were certain as we were writing /recording that it must be the first song ever to be written on two six string basses. I have no evidence on this either way, then or now, but we believed it and I think that gave the tune a little extra- thanks @johngrantmusic

— mrsimonraymonde (@mrsimonraymonde) June 9, 2021

surely a few Cure songs circa Faith and Disintegration?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YDumxXzYPA

Miley Cyrus covered Heaven or Las Vegas on Saturday. Slightly spoiled by feeling like she had intolerant fans breathing down her neck:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2he5Q2Tsn4

not bad!

that's so sad that she doesn't think any of her fans know that song!

man, she should stop touring. why do it? why not just play a packed club show of 250 people and have a good time? did she lose all her money or something?

why don't all other huge bands do this too? it's crazy to me. it's not even a pad thing for PR - some reporter will cover it as the secret gig that the band's confidence or something, and also you get to make up a funny joke as the name of the fake band

Smiley Iris

The fans at a packed club show might be as entitled, and intolerant of cover versions as a bigger crowd.

but maybe next time stop apologizing halfway through your decent cover version, not real flattering to the Cocteaus

I thought her whole stance was "defiant iconoclast against populist expectations", she needs to take some lessons in stagecraft from Van Morrison.

maybe it someone in the band's idea to cover that, or the manager or something? if you look at the clip in that way, the "none of you know this song" and "don't worry, it'll be over in a minute" are more like her yelling at the manager onstage, like "see i told you no ones like the fucking cocteau duo"

my brain is still reverberating from "heaven or Las VEYYYgas"

Agree, would kill for a clean version of this. Goosebumps anyway - she is peerless I think. I go back quite often to her version of Say Hello to Heaven from the Chris Cornell tribute.

but maybe next time stop apologizing halfway through your decent cover version, not real flattering to the Cocteaus

Seriously. Why bother doing a cover if you're gonna spend most of your time apologizing and talking through it ? If you love the song just own it.

it's rockism that I posted this video in the Miley thread to crickets when I shoulda posted it in here

hell yeah, cocteau twins forever

if you're gonna post in here, prepare to get engulfed in a sea of gentle angelic swooning

aka the REAL music

She didnt even bother working out what the words are
She apologised and told her own fans theyve never heard of these guys

Fuck. her.

tbf asking anyone to know the exact lyrics of a Cocteau Twins song feels like a minor feat

I've been writing something about the Cocteau Twins recently so have been amused by many of the lyrics sites attempts at transcription, but the songmeanings.com attempt at the middle 8 of HoLV may be worst:

Carnivals are bluster loud
I'm dizzy so I go under the 'Big Dipper'
Cum fantasy for a carnival
How fitting before a wedding

Can't help but read it in the voice of some dapper old gent, adjusting his monocle: 'A cum fantasy? Before a wedding? Ah, how fitting!"

omg at those lyrics

Vocals, Elizabeth Fraser
Lyrics, Robin Guthrie

Due to the earnest reply, I now have no idea if “fuck Miley for getting Cocteau Twins lyrics wrong” was a joke or not

It realy wasnt, the words to that song are fairly clear and obvious (save perhaps a bit of verse 1)

This is the Genius take and as far as I'm concerned its p close to correct (and some of its been confirmed correct too). As ive said a jillion times people forget a) the scottish accent and b) the way she will way-hey-heyyyyy her scansion to turn one word into ten.

Pull him away
Too jealous so with me
Go back for new
For new things there

Singing on a famous street
I want to love, I've all the wrong glory
Am I just in Heaven or Las Vegas?
Whichever's more brighter than the sun is to me

He's a hustler
Some role he'll never make suit
Hang on to this
To stay and stay, and then fail
Pull him away
Too jealous so with me
Go back for new
For new things there

Singing on a famous street
I want to love, I've all the wrong glory
Am I just in Heaven or Las Vegas? (Heaven or Las Vegas)
Whichever's more brighter than the sun is to me
Reaching this itch in my soul (Heaven or Las Vegas)
It's like any good playing card
Must be why I'm thinking of Las Vegas (Heaven or Las Vegas)
Why it's more brighter than the sun is to me

On a relisten, I'd actually suggest she probably sings "Itching this itchy muscle" and "whichever's more brighter than this zoo is to me" cos that's more her style, and who pronounces sun "soo"?

the fact that you're second-guessing yourself just now means the lyrics are probably not "fairly clear and obvious"

fairly, not entirely.

Anyway my general point is, idgaf if people do covers, I'm not precious about it, but this one felt particularly hamfisted.

I honestly did not know most of the lyrics to this song were real words

i learned how to play that song a few weeks ago on guitar, and i was singing along for the first time, it was kind of a baffling experience. the disconnect between her words and their effect on me, i mean. i would read them, and even sing them to the song, and it was just...nothing. but when liz sings them they seem like the most powerful and important things in the world.

i recall reading her saying more than once she was "feeling the words" like, her singing is the emotion, rather than the words themselves is how I guess I took it?

forever "bituminous itchy muscle" in my brain for 30+ years

LOL I cant unhear her singing "Sinn Fein" in one song, so you know.

Just interviewed Robin Guthrie for Bandcamp. THAT was a treat. It'll be a short guide to his solo work, and I learned a heck of a lot.

Oh wow, awesome.

Look forward to reading it

yeah, so cool! and i could use a short guide to his solo work, so looking forward to reading that for sure

Did you talk about his work with Harold Budd? Would love to hear his memories of working with him.

congrats ned, that's great

Thanks all -- yes the focus was on his strictly solo stuff with one exception, namely the Budd work. It'll be a total of five or six albums out of the whole -- think of this piece of mine as a model for the format:

https://daily.bandcamp.com/lists/a-guide-to-alessandro-cortinis-exploratory-electronic-music

I had a cocktail named "Cherry-Coloured Funk" the other day, it was fine. I'm sure it's not the first time a drink was named after that song

pic.twitter.com/RuA760P7F9

— Gabe (@gabrielszatan) February 9, 2022

It must be true

I recently got a copy of Blue Bell Knoll on vinyl. It sounds spectacular.

deciphering the lyrics to Blue Bell Knoll will lead you to a bejeweled statuette hidden in an English country field

"DRINK YOUR OVALTINE"

BE SURE TO DRINK
YOUR ATHOLL BROSE

So she really was saying "sip cherry coke" hih

I wish I'd saved the images when they were posted up on FB some years back but someone posted a letter they got from Lizzie way back in the day where I guess the band were still small enough to write back to some fans. And she wrote down all the lyrics to the Lullabies EP for this guy, when they'd just written it. It is I think a fascinating insight into how she wrangles words and scansion:

Alas Dies Laughing
Flaxen the tresses / Both
Flesh and fleshings / Tongue-
Tied and stuttering / Was
Quick take to mummering
Flaxen the tresses All
Fingers and stresses / Tongue-
tied and stuttering / Was
Quick take to mummering

like when you listen to this, I think what she ends up singing is slightly diff (she says "quick take to mummering fun" or tounge or similar). But yeah thats it.

Feathers Oar Blades
Bare in foot and hide
Barefaced bareheaded
Bare in foot and hide
Bare in foot and hide
Crestfallen, weeping
The cripples though crestless
Are crestfallen weeping
Feathers oar blades
Splitting hair feathers
Spitting out oar blades
Spitting out oar blades
Crestfallen, weeping
The cripples though crestless
Are crestfallen weeping
All in teetotum
Widdershins every’s body
Is all in teetotum
Is all in teetotum
Spitting out oar blades

She swaps the first 2 lines around on the record, maybe theyd done a few versions after she worked out the words.

Actually correction: she sings it this way on the Lullbies EP. She swaps the first 2 lines around on the Peel Session version.

But what a great play on words "Splitting hair feathers" is.

https://i.imgur.com/kqrzyJh.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/Mh2r6jS.jpg
holy shit - no idea these existed

oh wow i couldn’t find the scans!

so cool

Thanks for this

I've been a bit wary of knowing the exact lyrics apart from the fragments perceptible on the record covers, in the outside case they'd just turn out to be horrendous bullshit, but seeing that, I so want that complete-works volume that I cannot imagine we'll ever have.

barefaced bareheaded
bare in foot and hide

I mean

A lot of the time Lullabies is my favourite of all their stuff, so forbidding and mysterious, and as you say, knowing the lyric doesn't change that a bit.

Need to get back to that; I love Garlands and all, but the EP stuff has fallen a bit between the cracks.

the EPs are so great, endlessly rewarding timeless music

Lullabies def my favourite of all of their work, I think. That and the Echoes/Dynamine eps. Which I see were discussed at length upthread when Z had a Cocteaus-venture I missed! (I never read ILM much).

Was funny to learn it went "kicked all from my all from my all from my curtsies my curtsies my curtsies my" when I thtought she was singing "get offa my offa my case my case my" lol.

all for my all for my all for my kiss my kiss my kiss myyyy as I recall

Yeah ha I think at one point I also thought that was it. I mean who would hear "curtsies", she really smears the word.

Cocteau Twins are seen as progenitors to shoegaze in their guitar sound, but I guess you could say the same about their lyrical approach. I have always appreciated Slowdive and MBV because most pop lyrics are daft, and by submerging the vocals in the mix, those bands avoided that disappointment. Liz Fraser’s avant-garde lyric writing, which was then distorted behind recognition in her singing, was the same goodness.

Encountered "Pearly Dewdrops'-Drops" today, as part of a mix... what a terrific song (oddly titled though it is). I tried out some bits & pieces of their other early stuff, and wasn't feeling it as much... I'll have to keep trying, kept coming back to that one song.

try sampling the EPs as opposed to album tracks

If you like “Pearly…” specifically, then I’d recommend ‘The Pink Opaque’ which is a US compilation of key tracks from that era.

Thanks to both, those were good tips for finding a groove (this track "Millimillenary," dang...)

Wish I had been hip to this band in high school; they would have fit so tightly in my taste profile at the time.

(this track "Millimillenary," dang...)

so great and only available via the Pink Opaque comp, not released anywhere else which is a travesty obv

“Wax and Wane” remix is decent too, in that 80s 4AD dance mix vein

It also contains my favorite Cocteau’s track - “Aikea-Guinea”

"Aikea-Guinea" is my favorite CT track too :)

I think you would probably enjoy the album Head Over Heels, which is close in sound to "Pearly..", especially the song "Sugar Hiccup".