Formed in the aftermath of the punk implosion by Robin
Guthrie and Will Heggie in Grangemouth, Scotland,
and joined by Liz Fraser, who met the pair at a local
disco where Guthrie
had an occasional DJ spot, the Cocteau Twins rapidly
became one of the most influential bands of the last
two decades. Originally associated with bands such as
Siouxsie & The Banshees and Cure, the combination
of Guthrie’s
highly textural guitars, Heggie’s hypnotic bass
and Fraser’s ethereal vocals provided the trio
with an instantly recognisable sound, setting them apart
from their contemporaries. The band first got noticed
after Birthday Party drummer Phil Calvert suggested
they sent a tape to 4AD label boss Ivo Watts-Russell.
Almost immediately signed to the label, the Cocteau
Twins became its most prominent act in the early eighties,
before moving to Fontana in the early nineties. After
sixteen years together, the trio, then made up of Guthrie,
Fraser and bassist Simon Raymonde, finally split up
during the recording of their tenth, unreleased, album
in 1996.
Announced over a year ago by 4AD, the re-issue of the
first four Cocteau Twins albums, remastered by Robin
Guthrie, now gives a whole new generation the chance
to discover this unique act. Originally released in
July 1982, Garlands introduced the trademark
Cocteau Twin sound. Released in its original vinyl form,
without the 1982-3 Peel Sessions included when the album
was first released on CD in 1986, Garlands
is by far the band’s most angular, rough sounding
record. If Fraser’s intriguingly incomprehensible
lyrics already cast a shadow over the gossamer guitars,
tormented bass lines and robotic drum machines, the
treatment of the voice is much more straightforward
than on later recordings, revealing the fragile emotions
conveyed by her unique style. If Wax & Wane
and But I’m Not are unusually upbeat,
the rest of the album evolves in much more murky territories,
with the beautiful Shallow Then Halo and Garlands
proving two of the highlights here.
After Garlands, the band went on to record
a series of legendary Peel Sessions. toured the UK with
The Birthday Party and Modern English and supported
Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark during their 1982
European tour. Will Heggie left just before the band
started working on Head Over Heels, their second
album, which was eventually released in August 1983.
Hailed by the band as one of their favourite, this album,
and the EP that accompanied it, Sunburst & Snowblind,
featured the brilliant Sugar Hiccup, perhaps
one of the band’s best known songs. Building on
the atmospheres of its predecessor, this album saw the
band developing a more flexible and diverse approach
to their sound, perfecting the connections between Guthrie’s
dense textures and Fraser’s voice. If not as layered
as on more recent recordings, the band started experimenting
with multiple concurrent vocal lines, giving Fraser’s
already intriguing performances a more eerie presence.
More upfront and bold than Garlands, Head
Over Heels gave the Cocteau Twins their first number
one spot in the independent chart. Highlights here include
When Mama Was Moth which opens the album, Sugar
Hiccup, My Love Paramour and the storming
Musette & Drums, which the NME described
as ‘an impossibly cavernous finale to the free
flight we have enjoyed across such spectacular surfaces’.
By the time the third Cocteau Twins album was released,
the band had benefited not only from the success of
their own work, but also from their contribution to
Ivo Watts-Russell’s This Mortal Coil’s first
album It’ll End In Tears. Released almost
simultaneously with Head Over Heels, the Mortal
Coil album featured Fraser, Guthrie
and their new bassist, Simon Raymonde, with a stunning
version of Jeff Buckley’s Song To The Siren.
A trio once again, the Cocteau Twins presented on their
third opus, Treasure, a more delicate and organic
side to their music, giving a more prominent place to
acoustic guitars and pianos, while still making intense
use of effects and delays. Affected by the arrival of
Raymonde, the overall sound of the band started to soften
up slightly. Curiously, if a great majority of fans
declare this album as their favourite, the band unilaterally
proclaims it as their worst piece of work. In 1989,
Raymonde confessed that at the time, the trio had only
been friends for a little while and were simply learning
to work together. Despite this, the ten songs of Treasure
proved to be rather excellent, with melodies becoming
more complex and atmospheric, contrasting greatly with
the rigid lines of Garlands. Perhaps not as
dense as Head Over Heels, Treasure
remains to this day one of the most accessible Cocteau
Twins records.
With Raymonde busy working on the second This Mortal
Coil album, Filigree & Shadow, the Twins
found themselves as a duo again for the recording of
their fourth album. Fruit of Robin and Liz messing around
in the studio, Victorialand sees the pair in
unusual acoustic territories, developing some of the
ambiences heard on Otterley and Aloysius
from Treasure. There is a feeling of incredible
space around this album, mainly due to the notable absence
of drums or bass. Often mistaken for a new age record,
to the irritation of the band, Victorialand,
named after a region of the Antarctic, is a fascinating
collection of breezy and vaporous moments. Possibly
reaching the peak of vocal perfection, Liz Fraser’s
singing appears more diaphanous than ever.
In just four years and as many albums, the Cocteau Twins
went through major changes, both on personal and creative
levels. Reflected through their music, these changes
have proved pivotal in the evolution of the band’s
particular sound, turning it into something more pastoral
and luxurious, culminating in 1990 with the astounding
Heaven Or Las Vegas, which would be the band’s
most successful record, and the last for 4AD.
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