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Cocteau Twins (overview)
THERE IS a natural life-cycle to most bands. they start out all individualistic and experimental; if they're fortunate, what they're trying to put across will be acceptable at the time and they'll prosper. Otherwise, they'll have to adapt or die. Their first few releases will be all uncoordinated and strange; then, when they find their target, they'll settle down to refining the sound that will later characterise them. Gradually, they will become so aligned with the mainstream that their sound will be indistinguishable from everything else, at which point you may as well be listening to REM or Genesis. In my not-so-humble opinion, the best time to catch these bands is just as they're hitting their stride, depending on your taste. Take The Human League; they started off as an unusual synth band, and after two albums and realising there wasn't any money in that, they split, two-thirds of the band going off and becoming Heaven 17, the remaining third gradually schmoozing asymptotically into the grey haze of Normal with releases like 'Don't You Want Me, Baby?' Anyway, to my point. I'd be so bold as to say that the Cocteau Twins are only now beginning their (presumably inevitable) slide into averageness. Their distinctive sound is still evident; chiming guitar and enthrallingly melodic vocal lines ... but objective observers (ie not me) have noted some similarity in the sound of their recent releases. The sound flows. It's soft, dream-like, with only an occasional edge to it; not the sort of thing you'd find on a pub juke-box. I somehow associate the sound with autumn, cold winds beginning to blow dead leaves around my feet (though this image may be reinforced by their album covers, which occasionally feature such imagery). As far back as I can trace (and, apart from other difficulties in researching this band, they're with the 4AD label, which means their album covers are high on strange and beautiful artwork and low on informative text), they began in Edinburgh, Elizabeth Fraser, Robin Guthrie and Will Heggie (Twins. And there's three of them. Ho ho). Garlands (released in spring, 1982) - to someone familiar with their more current work - sounds monotonous in places, even raw; I could understand the direction they were taking, but I could never be sure that anyone else listening would. I'd find myself forming internal rationalisations, like "Well, yes, this track seems to go on forever, but the tune is kinda compelling, isn't it?" At this stage, Ms Fraser was still singing (mostly) in English, and the lyrics were on the border of comprehensibility (another distinguishing feature of their albums; they rarely, if ever, contain lyric sheets). In later releases, she seemed to be singing in tongues, and I don't mean that Holyroller Fundamentalist rubber-tongued gabba-gabba-gabba kind of glossolalia; the words sound beautiful, a smooth, sibilant alien language (with the occasional English phrase thrown in if it's sufficiently pleasing to the ear; 'Aurora Borealis' is one that springs to mind). Her voice is, to, my ears, nothing short of amazing; there are songs, the tunes of which will simply stop me dead in my tracks (and it is horribly embarrassing to be caught trying to sing along with her, particularly when you're forced to make up lyrics which sound something like what she's singing - Ms Fraser has admitted to making up new words out of her own head). Their next release, Head Over Heels, was done without Will Heggie, and provided material for a 12-inch EP, Sunburst and Snowblind. In late 1983, Simon Raymonde joined the band, and another 12-inch was released (which, featuring songs with such lyrical song-titles as "The Spangle-Maker", "Pearly-Dewdrops' Drops" and "Pepper-Tree". Fortunately for those of us who didn't find the Cocteau Twins until recently, these early releases were later included in a CD compilation, The Pink Opaque, along with a few remixes from Garlands, and a song which was only previously released as part of an NME compilation tape - Millimillenary, a song which I have often considered FORCING people to listen to at gunpoint. If i owned a gun. It's possible that I'm going overboard there; to me, it's one of those songs that makes me want to grab people by the scruff of the neck and growl, "Dammit, LISTEN to this! This is possibly the most beautiful collection of organised sounds currently in existence on this planet!" Ahem. Back to reality... An album, Treasure, followed (summer, 1984); by this time, their direction had been for the most part established. 1986 saw the release of Victorialand, and at this point, I'm going to list the song titles, so you can get some idea of how strange they'd become:
Lazy Calm / Fluffy Tufts / Throughout the Dark Months of April and May / Whales Tails / Oomingmak /Little Spacey / Feet-like Fins / How To Bring A Blush To The Snow / The Thinner The Air Between Treasure and Victorialand, they released four twelve-inch records which firmly established their sound. I suppose if one listened to every Cocteau Twins song done between 1984 and 1990, the sound might begin to pall. Still, the same could be said of most bands ... Also in 1986, they collaborated on an album with avant-garde pianist Harold Budd: The Moon And The Melodies. Track two - Memory Gongs - is a reworking of Flowered Knife Shadows, from his album Lovely Thunder. Or possibly, it's the other way around... another thing that makes researching this band difficult is their notorious shyness. They were once coerced into an interview with one of the teenage pop-fan magazines, in which they said confessed that they'd much rather be in the studio, recording (and of course, as soon as I say that, they go do an interview with Mondo 2000, and get seriously involved in the net). In the gap between '86 and the 1988 release of Blue Bell Knoll, they recorded a track, Crushed, for the 4AD compilation album Lonely Is An Eyesore. As well as that (although it's hard to tell because the relevant album doesn't have a date on it ANYWHERE), a group of people associated with the 4AD label (bands like Dead Can Dance, Colorbox, The Wolfgang Press, and the Cocteau Twins) worked on an album called It'll End In Tears, master-minded by Ivo Watts, released under the name This Mortal Coil. Heaven Or Las Vegas was released in 1990. I'm three-quarters convinced that there must be some kind of subliminal addictive effect built in to their sound, because it's only fractionally different in style from Blue Bell Knoll, and yet just as listenable (they also released a CD-single which contained two tracks that weren't on the album. Don't you hate that?). One sign that the Cocteau Twins are skirting dangerously close to commercial acceptance is that I saw the video of the single from their new album Four Calendar Cafe, on television. Unless Ms Fraser starts singing English lyrics, they can't really be exploited by the three-minute-rock-song crowd. Given that the following is a rough approximation of some Cocteau Twins lyrics:
Ee'ohx'zeus'té, In'cor'hor'dé, ... I don't think McDonald's will be using them to sell Happy Meals just yet. |
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All work on this site is © Nikolai Kingsley unless otherwise stated. |