The
story of the Cocteau Twins spans over sixteen years,
eight albums, thirteen EPs and nine singles, and also
includes collaborations with 4AD founder Ivo Watts-Russels
on the first This Mortal Coil album and with neo-classical
pianist and composer Harold Budd on the dense and introspective
The Moon & The Melodies. While most of
the band’s career was spent with South-London
imprint 4AD, the band parted company with the label
in 1990 and went on to record two more albums and a
handful of EPs and singles for Fontana before disbanding
in the middle of recording their ninth album in 1998.
While the 4AD EPs and singles were previously released
as a now rare box set in 1991, Lullabies To Violaine
collects for the first time the complete EPs and singles
released by the band between 1982 and 1996, and is released
as part of 4AD’s twenty-fifth anniversary celebrations.
Split over four CDs, the first two documenting the 4AD
years, with the last two focussing on the Fontana releases,
this box set reveals the true scope of the band and
how their work helped shaping the musical landscape
of indie music in the eighties and beyond.
Taking their name from an obscure Simple Mind song,
the Cocteau Twins was originally formed by guitarist
Robin Guthrie and bassist Will Heggie in the small Scottish
town of Grangemouth, a place once referred to as a ‘toilet’
by Guthrie, situated half-way between Edinburgh and
Glasgow. The pair were then joined by singer Elizabeth
Fraser and rapidly signed to then relatively new label
4AD and release their debut album, Garlands,
followed by the Lullabies and Peppermint
Pig EPs. Heggie consequently left the band, leaving
Guthrie and Fraser to continue, but the pair were joined
by new bassist Simon Raymonde in late 1983 and would
remain as such until the end.
From there on, the band’s sound continuously evolved,
from the rigid melodies of the early days to the foggy
atmospheres of Head
Over Heels and Treasure,
the vast ambient spaces of the wonderful Victorialand,
an album too often overlooked, and the more diaphanous
tones of Heaven Or Las Vegas or Milk &
Kisses. This totally unique approach to sound and
heavy injection of atmospheric tones right at the heart
of the music has, over the years, served to influenced
acts and movements as diverse as My Bloody Valentine,
Lush, Slowdive and the whole Shoegaze scene of the early
nineties right and the indie/electronic fusion of Seefeel
and Mark Clifford
through to Sigur Rós
and M83 today, with the stunning textures and moods
of Victorialand in particular also proving
influential with numerous ambient electronica artists.
The gaps between albums are filled in with this sumptuous
collection. Dotted lines are traced between Head
Over Heels and Treasure
with Sunburst & Snowblind, Aikea-Guinea,
Tiny Dynamine and Echoes In A Shallow Bay,
while the singles of the nineties, from 1990’s
Iceblink Luck to 1996’s Tishbite
and Violaine, give an insight into the various
stages of the band’s own evolution. This collection
also give the chance to revisit little gems such as
Laughlines, taken from the Peppermint Pig
EP (1983), this EP incidentally being the only instance
on which the Cocteau Twins worked with a producer (Alan
Rankin, of The Associates), Kookaburra (Aikea-Guinea),
Sigh’s Smell Of Farewell (Love’s
Easy Tears), Watchlar (Iceblink)
or Mark Clifford’s
hypnotic and heavenly reworking of Cherry-Coloured
Funk (Otherness). And while the presence
of the Snow EP of 1993, with the band’s
versions of Winter Wonderland and Frosty
The Snowman only serves to highlight how incongruous
an idea it was for Capitol, the band’s American
label, to even think of getting them involved in such
a project, this utterly essential retrospective, which
will be re-released as two standard double CDs in the
new year, provides the best opportunity to fully appreciate
the band’s unique body of work and considerable
influence on the music of the last twenty-five years.
4.8/5 |
