Best Cocteau Twins album

i voted "heaven or las vegas" here but i listened to all songs today in a non-album kontext and the result was quite surprising. for each song there was only the option to either love it or not to love it.

1. 90% (9/10) four-calendar café
2. 88% (7/8) garlands
3. 80% (8/10) heaven or las vegas

the only album which nobody voted for in the poll is my favourite at the moment. very weird.

i forgot the others. also strange, the poll winner is my least favourite album by them:

4. 50% milk & kisses
5. 44% victorialand
6. 40% head over heels
7. 30% blue bell knoll
8. 25% the moon % the melodies
9. 20% treasure

Oh my god, we're talking about Cocteaus on this board again? Please stop encouraging me! I don't know if I want to play Milk & Kisses or Blue Bell Knoll or Garlands or whatever the fuck. I really don't know.

My favourite is definitely Blue Bell Knoll for reasons outlined here:

http://devonrecordclub.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/cocteau-twins-head-over-heels-round-21-grahams-choice/

i really don't understand why nobody voted for four-calendar café. i still think it is their most consistent album. and it has one of their most amazing songs on it: theft, and wandering around lost.

maybe it's just because it's the first one i heard way back when, but blue bell knoll is probably my favorite, just wall to wall classics. it's so cool how the cocteau twins have such artfully subtle sonic variations on each of their albums so that choosing a favorite is almost down to what specific texture grabs you the most on a particular day.. like different alloys or something.

xp to brimstead - title track on Blue Bell Knoll is probably one of my favourite songs by Cocteaus.

I could totally go for a whole album of this country-fried dream rock though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7igZdDJyz4

I probably would've voted for "Treasure" but really the answer is the singles box.

Completely agree. So many classic bsides

listening to four calendar café and milk & kisses for the first time ever and ...they're not as bad as i assumed they'd be? nowhere near the highs of heaven or las vegas, but not bad at all

Nah. I might have a soft spot because they were two of the first I heard but I think they're great.

Songs like 'Summer-Blink' are a million miles away from where they started but it feels like a well-earned and reflective respite at the end of a long journey.

The problem I have with Four Calendar Cafe and Milk & Kisses is that they didn't advance beyond the sound of Heaven or Las Vegas. Before that, each album was a progression from the sound of the previous one (admittedly, only a matter of degrees--they were never not going to sound like Cocteau Twins). But after briefly experimenting with some very different approaches on the 1995 Twinlights and Otherness EPs, I was disappointed the following year when Milk & Kisses seemed to reflected none of that.

The Otherness EP is post-peak peak CT, but owe's more to Seefeel's Mark Clifford.

For me, its either Head Over Heels or the EPs from Spangle Maker to

oops... to Love's Easy Tears.

The problem I have with Four Calendar Cafe and Milk & Kisses is that they didn't advance beyond the sound of Heaven or Las Vegas.

I feel exactly the opposite. "Milk & Kisses" really is Cocteau by numbers, but at least the songs are there. I find 4CC kind of boring and uninspired.

never got into four calendar cafe, agree with LeRooLeRoo here. Really been into head over heels / sunburst and snowblind lately. Though I think the version of "sugar hiccup" on BBC session kills the studio flat. BBC sessions is probably one of their best records

Is there an EP's poll?

Hi Jed

Can you pick the best Cocteau Twins EP/single? (poll ends 15/05/07)

love's easy tears is clearly the best tho

Thanks, Ross.

This album poll is impossible though. Depends on whatever CT i'm listening to at the time. Victorialand would probably be my choice. "Sunday" on Valet's album "Nature" totally rips on "Lazy Calm" by CT, recommended if you like that same sublime buzz

I have the suspicion that "Four Calendar Cafe" is not loved as it is the first album where she sings in English, where her lyrics make sense. The mystery is gone, she is just like you and me, no angel and no elf. That's totally ridiculous but the only possible reason I can up with why nobody except me loves that album. "Bluebeard" is such a great tune and the guitar has got that phantastic twangy indierock feel. And the song after is probably the best song in their oeuvre. I wrote it already upthread. It is utter perfection, music to bath in. The next song where she stutters is phantastic again. Are you all deaf? FCC is a pop album but it is of one piece, seriously underestimated. If I want to öisten to ONE album by them these days it is FCC.

can up with = can come up with

There's the problem: twangy indierock feel. For longterm fans, Cocteau Twins always offered otherworldly escapism.

Half Gifts is devastating partly because of its direct intimate lyrics

Cocteau Twins make me happy

If I was going to vote in this poll again, I would vote for Garlands

Milk & Kisses is great, though.

Treasure

Just listened to Garlands, Head Over Heels and Treasure back to back, which I've never done before. It's been many years since I heard these:

Garlands is genuinely unsettling, I still love the dark vibe. It's always been it's own thing.
Head Over Heels is more of a mixed bag than I remembered, the second half really pales in comparison to the first. It's transitional nature is apparent, it retains some of the early darkness while the better tracks let the light in.
Treasure is glorious in its fullness, they've arrived at their signature sound and it all works, even the drum machine.

I think I'll spin the next three in a row now.

One of the most consistent bands of the 80s.

I was one of the Victorialand votes - some of that has to do with how left-field a move it seemed at the time; in my peer group, the Cocteau Twins, from the EPs through Treasure, had rapidly become the "everybody agrees this band is awesome" band -- I remember specific parties with Aikea-Guinea playing on the stereo, the sound stapling itself permanently to the moment & the era. It felt like music that would bind us in the coming years. Victorialand was the first one to come out the year after I graduated high school, and I bought it fresh off the rack -- I knew I had to hear it. To get it home and hear that they'd jettisoned the propulsive, driving percussive sound that informed so much of their preceding year-plus: it felt SO brave & nervy, so confident -- I listened to that album every day for a long time in '86. Get stoned, listen to Victorialand. Feel like committing suicide, listen to Victorialand. Wonder if there's any real future, listen to Victorialand.

It was the perfect album for that time & for me then, it was a world into which I could grant myself entrance where things were beautiful and safe but not so safe that deep sadness and longing weren't also there.

Victorialand is my favorite, as well.

Head Over Heels is more of a mixed bag than I remembered, the second half really pales in comparison to the first.

I mean, the second half contains "In The Gold Dust Rush", "The Tinderbox (Of a Heart)", and "Musette and Drums" which are three of my favorite CT songs ever, though I agree "Multifoiled" and "My Love Paramour" aren't as strong.
I always thought "Multifoiled" sounded like Siouxsie's "Cocoon" from the year before. And there's also The Cure's "Speak My Language" that came out around the same time.

I'm with you on "Musette And Drums", an excellent closer, but the others don't do it for me like "When Mama Was Moth" or "Sugar Hiccup". I'm hardly saying they're bad but there's a noticeable drop-off in quality for me.

Another vote for Victorialand. Love the absence of drums

moon and melodies is super underrated. in time tho my heart is with heaven or las vegas, which is probably their most perfect distilled dream pop statement - never fails to brighten up any day

Feel you on M+M. 'Why Do You Love Me' is one of my all-time favorite instrumentals.

It's funny to see old threads like this revived... apparently, I was "over the Cocteaus" in about 2002. Well, they came back. I've been listening to them a lot in the last 2-3 years.

And it's still BBK.

That sounds like 'I'm over my skeleton' to me.

Not a big fan despite loving all the other usual suspects from that scene/era, and only heard half of these I think, but Heaven or Las Vegas would be the easy choice for me. More muscular and groovy than all the other stuff I heard.

I would say the early Heggie stuff was easily the most muscular.

oh totally RAG, "blind dumb deaf"

It's Victorialand but HoLV is stiff competition.