So with the Sibyl's profile ever-rising, let's take a quick look at the Cocs' unimpeachable discography, which is as perfect as any band's I can think of...
The Cocs picked up Siouxsie's witch-broom just as the Banshees were headed into Top of the Popsville. This is a deeply divisive album among many Cocteau fans (the lead-off track is entitled "Blood Bitch"), but I love it.
It sits perfectly alongside Unknown Pleasures, What's This For?, 154, Metal Box, and of course, Juju—a dark, throbbing post-punk filled with rumbling Rickenbacker bass chords, Robin Guthrie's guitars with stompboxes cranked to 11, and tribal drum machine patterns.
All of that is topped with Elizabeth Fraser's warbling and yowling and precocious swatches of lyrics, ripe to bursting with the imagery of ancient nightmares, science fiction, and Celtic witchiness, all inspired by the dark landscape which bore them.
The out-of-print extended version adds crucial cuts like "Dear Heart" and "Perhaps Some Other Aeon," all of which tell a very dark tale of the many abuses Elizabeth suffered in her youth.
Vibe: Cold, dark, scary
Best Heard: On cold, foggy nights
Head Over Heels (1983)
Probably my sentimental favorite of the studio albums. Head Over Heels feels like 1983 in the way a 1983 record should, so don't listen to whining about the mix. It's also a light-year leap over Garlands, with melodies replacing mere incantations.
The Cocs are still smack dab in post-punk territory, with Guthrie layering bass chords on top of distortion-drenched arpeggios and Killing Joke drum patterns. This is a huge-sounding record with a wide stylistic range, and Elizabeth never sounded as gloriously womanly as she does here ever again.
Think early 70s Streisand after a particularly harrowing ayahuasca ordeal and you'll get the gist of it. Take it outside on a stormy autumn night to get the full effect of it. And for those who know, the lyrics on this record unveil the truth behind the Sibyl's dolorous passions.
Key cuts: "Sugar Hiccup," "In the Gold Dust Rush," "In Our Angelhood."
Vibe: Dark, sexy, angry, trauma-laden
Best Heard: On windy, stormy autumn nights
Treasure (1984)
Another huge leap in approach, but at the same time, more of a consolidation. The try-anything spirit of Heels gives way here to the trademark Cocteau sound: sleigh bells and choral sample patches, pounding beatboxes (with John Bonham samples), and interlocking post-punk guitar and bass chords.
There's plenty of variety, though—the nail-biting, Flowers of Romance-tier shrieker "Persephone," Elizabeth's stately waltz "Beatrix," and the ambient soundscape "Otterley," to name just a few.
The addition of Simon Raymonde on bass and keyboards adds significant music-school depth to the proceedings. And even if you may not know exactly what Elizabeth is going on about here, she's obviously extraordinarily passionate about it.
Treasure was released in 1984 but seemed to exist in every time at once. Everyone who discovered it assumed it was brand new, and everyone who discovered it insisted it belonged to them alone.
And yes, it's the perfect soundtrack for your winter wonderland nighttime jaunts.
Vibe: Big, brash, otherworldly, dissociative
Best Heard: Cold, snowy nights
The Pink Opaque (1986)
This compilation was put together to introduce the Twins to the American market, and it is as essential as those old Sixties compilations. In fact, this might be the best place to start if you're new to the Cocteau Twins; every single note on this album is crucial in a way music no longer is to young people. The lead-off track, "The Spangle Maker," is worth what people used to pay for entire albums.
In fact, the final sixty seconds of "The Spangle Maker"—in which Elizabeth erupts into a series of blood-curdling yowls like a particularly aroused ancient Maenad (she inspired many such comparisons back in the day), while Robin Guthrie wrenches the clap of creation out of his guitar with an E-bow—is worth a week's salary.
Sadly, there's nothing mythical about what she's actually wailing about in that crescendo. Or is there?
Vibe: Dark, sexy, angry, trauma-laden
Best Heard: Outside, at night
Victorialand (1986)
After four years of pounding euphoria, a looping curveball from a band specializing in them arrived: a pastoral serving of alien folk. Layer upon layer of treated guitar, primarily accompanied by Elizabeth's "little-girl-in-the-garden" fairy tale reveries.
The sense of playfulness and joy is almost palpable here as Elizabeth and Guthrie (Raymonde was off producing the second This Mortal Coil album) used their prodigious talents to construct a fantasy of a childhood they never had, growing up in grim and hellish Grangemouth, Scotland.
Then a curveball within a curveball: after a happy day in a forest clearing, the darkness of the gods descends like a sheet of ice for the album's closer, "The Thinner the Air." It's as if you can see the black clouds roll in, as the chords change from carefree and major to hopelessly bleak and minor.
After her Greek-like chorus prepares the way, Elizabeth chills the bones with a piercing, almost primeval solo response that reeks of dark portents and terrible tragedies to come, as if Cassandra herself is riding this horse now.
It's a stunning finish for an album whose song titles—such as "Fluffy Tufts" and "Lazy Calm"—accurately describe its mood.
Vibe: Pastoral, mystical, otherworldly
Best Heard: Lazy summer days
After the curveball, a changeup: ambient pianist Harold Budd was enlisted for an LP featuring four glorious rave-ups and four ambient chill-outs—a definite portent of things to come post-Cocteau.
Budd, who worked on a number of albums and soundtracks with Guthrie, fit the Twins like a glove. In fact, his playing is remarkably similar to Raymonde's, with major 7ths and diatonic harmonies. Budd's elegant chords added a dash of maturity to the Twins' ecstatic hammering, an effect that would have a huge influence in the days to come.
The four full-band tracks here—along with "Crushed" (released the following year on the Lonely Is an Eyesore compilation album)—would mark the end of the Cocteau Twins' Golden Age, that era of "Oh my effin' God, what the hell is this music?" ontological shock.
The effect would be diminished through familiarity and endless imitation, but the Twins' international profile would only rise with the following two albums.
Vibe: Mystical, ambient, joyous
Best Heard: By the fireside, on a cold night
Blue Bell Knoll (1988)
Or Blue Bell Knowles, as I like to call it.
Apparently, the Cocteau Twins thought their fans took 35 minutes to have sex, because they seem to have set out to make the ultimate post-punk bonking record with Blue Bell Knoll.
The entire production seems engineered to be as lush and languid as possible, with even the minor key songs dripping with palpable sensuality. The basic experience is like having Elizabeth's tongue in your ear for a half-hour and change; the effect is that erotic.
The pounding drums and slashing guitars are missing, but the catharsis has merely been channeled through another route. I actually curled into a fetal position the first time I heard this album, quite involuntarily. It hurt, it was so gorgeous.
Imagine if late-70s ABBA dropped a shit-ton of molly after being abducted by aliens, and you've pretty much got Blue Bell Knoll nailed.
Vibe: Lush, druggy, sensuous
Best Heard: While having sex
Heaven or Las Vegas(1990)
Pre-Nirvana alt-rock represented the true Golden Age of the movement. It was a period of genuine musical diversity, offering a range of styles and flavors that extended far beyond irritable white dudes with guitars and long hair living out Lynyrd Skynyrd fantasies.
MTV's 120 Minutes showcased a broad spectrum of bands, and the scene was not merely a boys' club; women were well-represented. This inclusivity was a key aspect of what made the scene "alternative" to mainstream rock. It was into this fertile environment that Heaven or Las Vegas was released, and finally, the world was ready for the Cocteau Twins, and they were ready for the world.
Heaven or Las Vegas features a dizzying array of styles, from the slow funk jam of "Pitch the Baby" to the old-school, post-punk-flavored single "Iceblink Luck" (a clear nod to early tracks like "In Our Angelhood" and "Because of Whirljack"). It also includes the almost quintessential Cocteau title track, a song squarely in the tradition of early-80s stunners like "Sugar Hiccup" and "Pearly Dewdrops Drops."
However, the bottom was about to drop out. Raymonde and Guthrie were battling serious drug problems (an unsurprising revelation for this band, perhaps), and Elizabeth's recent motherhood was forcing her to finally confront the carnival of traumas that was her own childhood.
Nirvana arrived at the end of the Cocteau Twins' world tour, and the alt-rock scene soon bore a closer resemblance to 1971 than 1991. Ecstatic warbling was out; miserable narcissism was in, and dick-waving tantrums reigned supreme for the next three years.
Vibe: Futuristic, otherworldly, hummable
Best Heard: At night, in a beautiful city
Four Calendar Cafe (1993)
The alt-rock scene finally began to shake off its trailer park doldrums in late 1993 and 1994. The original grunge bands moved away from two-finger tantrums into more challenging musical territory, and new movements like neo-punk, trip-hop, and techno emerged.
However, the Cocteau Twins were not faring as well. Guthrie was a drugged-out husk of a man, and his relationship with Elizabeth had dissolved due to his substance abuse and abusive behavior.
Already experiencing a severe mental health crisis, Elizabeth's split with Guthrie and her rebound romance with Buckley (among other more serious issues) was badly affecting her emotional state, and she began experiencing vocal-cord problems. Worse was yet to come: troubling interviews, the "distressed dolphin" live performances, and other difficulties.
That said, Cafe is a quite-pleasant '90s pop album and somewhat of a return to the temporal variety of the Eighties and aural sensuality of Blue Bell Knoll after the radio-friendly sparseness of Heaven or Las Vegas.
But it's a world away from the hair-raising revelations of the mid-'80s Cocteaus. One keeps waiting for Elizabeth to break out of her Enya/Lush-mode and let it rip, but that release never comes. She only sings in her natural mezzo on the second single, "Bluebeard," and the epic closer, "Pur."
Still, Four Calendar Cafe is a great balm for when you got the blues.
Vibe: Bleak, mournful, with joyful relief
Best Heard: Cold and rainy Saturday afternoons
Milk and Kisses (1996)
The idea for this album was to return to the 80s Cocteau sound, and it's partially successful at that. Sadly, too much water had passed under the bridge, and to say dream pop and shoegaze were out of favor in 1996 is putting it mildly—extremely mildly.
The other problem was that the Cocs' record label seemed to have thrown in the towel, and the original CD mastering sounded cheap and hollow. Subsequent remasters would immeasurably improve the sound, providing the congregant with a sensuous and three-dimensional music experience.
Live recordings from this era are very much worth your time. Several cuts here—"Tishbite", "Violaine," "Treasure Hiding," and "Seekers Who Are Lovers"—worked very well live, freed of smothering overdubs, and boasting meaty live guitars and Fraser's full-throated mezzo.
Many moldy old goth purists and aging Eighties alterna-bois have never forgiven the Twins for existing past 1985, but their opinions are as useless as their petulant refusal to deal with adult life.
Vibe: Lush, rich, sensuous, joyous
Best Heard: In bed, with headphones on
BBC SESSIONS (1999)
This is a weird set, as it leans heavily on the 1982–1984 material and skips ahead to the 1995–1996 material, with everything in between missing in action. There's a larger story waiting to be told here, since superfan John Peel suddenly went cold on the Twins following The Moon and the Melodies, which may well be the tip of a weird and dark iceberg lurking at the edges of the Cocteau Saga.
Be that as it may, this set is worth having for the 1982–1983 material alone, featuring the band at their first Gothic blush, all dark musical angles and troubling lyrical revelations, especially in the otherwise unreleased tracks "Hearsay Please" and "Dear Heart."
And while the cover of "Strange Fruit" is a missed opportunity and the Twinlights material doesn't translate well to a live setting, BBC Sessions is still very much worth hunting down.
Lullabies to Violaine Vol 1 (1982-1990)
The Twins put just as much essential music on their EPs as their LPs. This set starts in early-Coc witch-mode, with the ironically titled Lullabies filled with noisy post-punk conjurings.
"Peppermint Pig" shows the band lurching towards dance-punk, but the real revelation comes with the orgasmic Sunburst and Snowblind, which culls and remixes "Sugar Hiccup" from Heels and adds three equally good tracks: the aching, ambiguous "From the Flagstones," the traumatic howler "Hitherto," and the pleading post-punk charger "Because of Whirljack."
From then on, it's one cathartic mindgasm after another, with only a couple of duff tracks here and there. This is all pure post-punk Twins—beauty and terror in equal parts, with everything cranked to 11, but still sounding achingly beautiful.
Moreover, tracks like "Great Spangled Fritillary" and "Pale Clouded White" sound impossibly ancient and otherworldly, like lost transmissions from some Mediterranean mystery cult that bounced off the stars and back, with Fraser riding the fumes of the gods and revealing their terrible secrets to us all.
Lullabies to Violaine Vol 2 (1993-1996)
This set is less essential than the first but may be a better investment for some than the Twins' two studio albums, as it culls their singles. If the band seemed to be hedging themselves into a corner for their new label on their LPs, they were breathing quite a bit more on the B-sides and EPs.
None of these tracks will make you forget the Cocs' original 4AD material, but this compilation contains echoes of the old fire and is considerably more adventurous and arty than one might expect at this late date. Even better, tracks like "An Elan," "Smile," and "Flock of Soul" easily rank with the band's finest—and weirdest—salvos.
The Otherness tracks feature Seefeel's Mark Clifford unleashing ambient deconstructions of selected tracks, and the long-out-of-print Snow EP is included, with their priceless versions of "Winter Wonderland" and "Frosty the Snowman." Also included is the must-have final recording, "Touch Upon Touch," which proves that the Twins went out at the top of their game, musically speaking.
I'm not crazy about some of the mopey Twinlights tracks included in the BBC session selections, but the live versions of "Violaine" and "Seekers Who Are Lovers" showed what a force of nature the Twins could be playing live.
Treasure Hiding: The Fontana Years (2018)
This box set collects all of the Fontana material—Four-Calendar Cafe, Milk & Kisses, and the many EPs—remasters it, then adds tracks from the Twins' BBC sessions (from the now-unavailable BBC Sessions set).
Even if a lot of the Fontana material lacks the face-grabbing immediacy of the 4AD tracks, it is all very well crafted. Simon Raymonde's musical training and pedigree gave a lot of the material a classic Sixties/Seventies pop sheen, and Elizabeth Fraser's fractal song-craft on many of the tunes is bolstered by a wider tonal range than ever.
The Twins were as uncool and unfashionable as you can imagine in these final years, but that's through no fault of their own. Tastes and trends moved at a different pace then, and the overall culture of the rock scenes in the US and UK were not moving in their favor.
No worries now: the passage of time has been extremely kind to the '90s Cocteau Twins, so dive in and bliss out.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Tell me your secret history.