Cocteau Twins - Milk & Kisses C/D

I had never heard it until today either. It sounded like bullshit to me, but it has a wikipedia articlehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereal_wave and apparently the terrifying website Rate Your Music has it as a genrehttp://rateyourmusic.com/genre/Ethereal+Wave/.

I came up in the 90s so I thought maybe I just didn't know what I was talking about. This has always been Dream Pop if I had to assign a genre.

"Etherial wave" was a short lived marketing category in the Projekt catalog, before it all got subsumed into the overly amorphous "dream pop"

It's modern in the sense that for many of us, before the web existed even if you knew what the term meant it would have been hopeless to try and use it in a conversation because nobody else would have a clue what you meant.

but did fans of Cocteau Twins in the late 80s ever use this term to describe their music and bands like them? even to other fans?

As someone who just heard the term today, it just feels like a product of a younger generation who think of Music like Pokemons or Dinosaurs and have to catch em all and categorize everything to a minute point of distinction just so certain groups might come up a bit quicker when you plug their microgenre into a search engine.

Or, maybe I am just a fella that is too old and doesn't know as much as he thinks he does. This seems more likely.

Ethereal was definitely a term that was common online in the mid-90s and it referred to, as a shorthand, music like the Cocteau Twins. Like on the 4AD mailing list and Usenet. It took a few more years of Internet to really get reified into a "genre" though. Probably.

Like, in the sense that genres became more important than bands as the Internet taught us that categories were more important than examples.

4ad mailing list, ca. 1992-1996, would have used "thislisty".

"Ethereal", was, however the most overused adjective applied to CT in the 1980s press, and the Projekt mail order catalog used "ethereal wave" to describe bands following in the wake of CT through the mid 90s, as opposed to bands that emulated the "darkwave" of Dead Can Dance (which evolved into RYM's "neoclassical darkwave").

As in, Area/M7x, Bel Canto, Strange Boutique, later Love Spiral Downward, maybe Collection d'Arnell-Andrea and Mephisto Walz, are all "thislisty" music.

Hey wow, 4AD-L reprazent. I think I was there maybe '94 - '97. Eyesore is still out there I believe.

Well if Projekt used the term "ethereal wave" to sell records back in the day, I guess it must have been a genre. There isn't much more to genre is there? Thanks everybody!

Genres are walls now; they used to be maps.

Milk & kisses has been a big letdown for me after the two phantastic albums before. "heaven or las vegas" was my entrance to the cocteaus, a literally heavenly album if there ever was one. "four-calendar café" was more of the same but even more perfect. each song a killer. i am just listening to it and still surprised how well it aged. the perfect night music. there is nothing more soothing than listening to it between 3 and 4 in the morning.

Sad to hear the Guthrie remasters aren't well liked, they're all I've ever known.

The ethereal goth/dreampop thread covers everything ethereal wave.

Will Four-Calendar Cafe or Milk & Kisses ever get reissued? Seems like now would be a good time.

Somehow I never realized that the second volume of Lullabies to Violane had all the B-sides from the Milk and Kisses era. I’m not sure any of them belonged on the album based the first few listens. But they are pretty good – and there are a ton of them.

Tranquil Eye is a fun Milk and Kisses b-side!

I've been listening to King's sole album practically on repeat through Covid. Especially in its second half its practically a love-letter to Heaven or Las Vegas era Cocteaus, esp the post-album b-side Watchlar. How I wish this, more R&B inflected, version of the Cocteaus was the template for Milk & Kisses. I mean, Massive Attack surely heard this direction prior to "Teardrop".

A huge problem for me with all the bands shoveled into "etherial wave" bin (see above) is they could mimic the guitar presets, but weren't R&B fans. Liz Frasier wasn't a gothy choir girl, she was trying to channel Ella.

Imagine if the Milk & Kisses sessions had been produced by "3D" Del Naja. Might not have saved the band, but it would have been a great course correction.

Thanks for the heads up – I’m also a big “Watchlar” fan and about 15 seconds into the first track of that King record I was thinking Ryuichi Sakamoto, so it was nice to see they’re into him.

All that said I’m not totally sure this feels that Cocteau-y to me? One of my favorite things about Liz is that there are so many of her. There’s Speaking in Tongues Liz (She Will Destroy You, Frou-Frou). There’s Plaintive Liz (The open of Fotzepolitic). There’s Ethereal Trilling Liz (Lorelei, Aikea-Guinea, Half-Gifts). There’s Operatic Liz (Seekers Who Are Lovers, Carolyn’s Fingers). There’s Wailing Liz (Love’s Easy Tears, Great Spangled Fritillary).

It’s not that simple obv. but I feel like we don’t get that on King?

Somehow I never realized that the second volume of Lullabies to Violane had all the B-sides from the Milk and Kisses era. I’m not sure any of them belonged on the album based the first few listens. But they are pretty good – and there are a ton of them.

― Naive Teen Idol, Monday, 16 November 2020 03:22 (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ending with "Alice" seems both appropriate and like finishing with a question mark - that track most of all suggests a different route the band could have taken had they stayed together.

have any of their final recordings as a band from 1997 been released? I thought Touch Upon Touch was the latest recorded song that got official release.

On the last Volume compilation? I bought a few of those, but I don't recognise Volume 17 from Discogs, so I guess I never picked that one up. I may never have heard that track until now (Treasure Hiding comp on Spotify). They were pretty good at giving exclusive gems to comps. The High Monkey-Monk is a bit of a classic, I think (Melody Maker comp - which I got on cassette, long gone now). Doesn't sound like a BBK/HoLV cast-off at all, but something out on its own.

true! Touch upon Touch was on the Dewdrops compilation "Splashed with Many a Speck" too