Cocteau Twins : Classic or Dud

aw I thought there'd be more examples

sugar hiccup is an amazing song, even though she sings "sugar hitler" throughout the song. singing "hiccup" over and over with heavy reverb is like pinching the tip of your tongue with your fingers and saying "am i a huge apple?"

despite that, i have been on an amazing cocteau twins ride this year. 2020 - covid19 and cocteau twins, is how i will remember it

yeah she really lays into that vocal, it's joyous

describe this ride, Karl? Have you been thru the whole discography (incl 4CC?!)? Focused on a particular album? Live cuts, b-sides, videos, interviews, what? I'm curious. I'm overdue for an immersion myself.

This is the first I've seen that TikTok, and lo, a new d/n.

I gotta shout out the balmy stretch on side two of Blue Bell Knoll when they go bossanova for two songs (Suckling the Mender -> Spooning Good Singing Gum). Utter bliss

one of my fav Liz vocal moments is in the third line of “pearly dewdrops drops” where she does this high pitched almost-scream for a single note.. reliably spine-tingling

xp rip van winko

very much unstructured, and not a very deep dive at all. i'm a total rookie, which is my favorite thing to be with music - a rookie is still at the beginning of it all.

general journey so far:
2000s-2016ish - always heard cocteau twins were really cool, i knew generally who they were, but every time i listened to them it was probably a mp3 played on a laptop, rarely a real speaker system, generally only a song or two at a time. i mentally categorized them as "had to be there"

2017-19 - slow awakening, particularly with Heaven or Las Vegas (the album). a few songs struck me, and i started to listen to it every couple months, instead of every few years. we also ad a comp (stars and topsoil) that my partner would play on occasion.

unidentified time, 2019/20 - 420 unlock, "Frou-frou Foxes in Midsummer Fires". in a certain mood i would write way tf too much about the experience of loving that song for the first time. now it's not even my favorite on the album. holy shit

2020 - a couple months of continued Heaven or Las Vegas worship - i am a slow listener. but then i finally decided to venture out to the other stuff. for a brief moment, i was of the opinion that Garlands was the greatest album of all time. but it turned out that i just really liked "wax and wane" way too much. still, it was a gamechanger song for me because i started hearing them in a new way. there are all these tenuous connections in that era (to me at least) between punk and post punk and goth and 4AD and the like, sometimes it's hard to connect the dots. the Cocteau Twins of "wax and wane" still sound gloriously like the way they sound in their late 80s version; it was almost like holding up the same object in a different light and getting a sense of its weight.

victorialand is where i started getting obsessed, though. i mean...there's pretty much no bass. but it doesn't sound tinny, it sounds light. it's hallucinatory in stretches. i've listened to it a million times and it's hard for me to even mention specific songs because they all just flow together. i'm not sure i've ever heard it without listening to the whole thing.

i was also in a harold budd-mode earlier this year so of course i gave a good amount of time to The Moon and the Melodies.

treasure is my current obsession. i am astounded by how much they own their sound. i can immediately recognize them now, it's unmissable, despite there being a million bands that try to do the same thing.

i haven't even really listened to blue bell knoll that much, yet. or the post heaven or las vegas stuff. plenty of time. <3

i keep attempting a complete catalog listen, chronologically, and then i get stuck in treasure and just play it over and over

on the other hand,

Blue Bell Knoll [Capitol, 1988]
Harold Budd records in their studio. The Bulgarian State Radio and Television Female Vocal Choir records on their label. I understand that they're more foolish than either (not naive, not after six years), and that they've been known to milk momentary momentum out of electric guitars, but the affinities are there--these faeries are in the aura business. So what are they doing on the alternative rock charts? Ever hear the one about being so open-minded that when you lay down to sleep your brains fall out? C+

completely fuck that guy forever

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_9IsLaK4yo

BBK is probably still my favorite and I don't understand Xgau's criticism at all (I often don't)

Victorialand is mid-wreckingly great, "How to Bring a Blush to the Snow" is every comfort I ever needed. I'd advise you to spend more time with Garlands, title track is fantastic, "Shallow Then Halo" astonishing, "Grail Overfloweth" the bleak heaven all us Goths wanted back in the day. Blue Bell Knoll is more intricate but similarly lush as HOLV. And call me when you pop the lid on Love's Easy Tears, the zenith of everything great about them.
A big realisation for me a few years back was that I love Beach House because they sound so much like CT, no coincidence that they're on Bella Union I guess.

haha, was just thinking about beach house and CT! for some reason, reading that christgau thing made me think "would he hate something like beach house today?"

i'm not a total noob with blue bell knoll (i was actually listening to 'the itchy glowbo bow' just as brimstead posted it!), i just have only listened to it maybe 5 times at this point. looking forward to #500

just to pin a soon to be dated covid-19 take on the cocteau twins, tbh i have spent a lot of 2020 wandering around my house with noise canceling headphones, in a daze, working during work hours or in the evening, losing myself in an album in the middle of the night on the couch or in the middle of a workday, working from home. cocteau twins have been a perfect soundtrack to whatever this year has been for me.

Karl ya gotta give time to the astonishing singles as well, handily compiled on Lullabies To Violaine

i mean, "suckling the mender"? how is this even real? i love that a real band laid this to tape

xp oh nice, i see it's got sugar hitler! ;)

are their singles generally separate from the albums?

most of those, yes

"Ice-Blink Luck" A-side is on HOLV but everything before that is EP-only

nice! i will probably be listening to this tonight at some point, thanks! :)

i only have Heaven or Las Vegas and Stars and Topsoil on LP. i have a feeling the next few months are going to be expensive, but i gotta get all this shit

karl, the ep’s are so, so good. love’s easy tears is sometimes my favorite release of theirs. an exquisite 15 minutes of music.

the two releases i first heard way back when i listened to music obsessively on tapes: the tiny dynamine ep and the pink opaque comp. i still get wistful goosebumps when i revisit them.

completely agree that the lullabies to violaine comp is essential.

ok, i'm listening now. i'm such a sucker for motorik ("feathers oars-blades"). are these chronological? i assume this is 1981. the influence of motorik is everywhere but i'm trying to think of another 1981 track that carries the torch so well

yeah the EPS are necessary.. but the sound on lullabies to violaine is kinda ass-y

I hiked to the actual Blue Bell Knoll a few months ago :D
While she was in Europe I'd go through my sister's tape collection for driving music cause my car only had a tape deck yet I had hardly any tapes. Chose 4 Calendar Cafe and drove around to it on the 1st nice day of Spring. Perfect soundtrack, I fell in love. Sis also had Heaven or Las Vegas which I also borrowed and loved, and Treasure which for some reason I only liked one song on. In college, Milk and Kisses was ubiquitous in record shops but I heard it wasn't very good so never bought it. Figured they were one of those bands who had a couplefew albums that really clicked with me and that's all.
Fast forward to a couple years ago when I signed up for streaming services and their earlier albums would come up in suggestions or playlists, causing a mindblown.gif reaction in me. Not only was there a bunch more stuff of theirs that I liked (ie literally everything else I hadn't heard) but I liked much of it more than the stuff I'd already known (or at least liked it as much).

I hiked to the actual Blue Bell Knoll a few months ago :D

i didn't know it was a real place, so any details would be gobbled up, by me

"from the flagstones"!

love this one.

i think gated drums were a big issue for me, for a while. not sure when that stopped, but it's been a long time, and now the effect feels as otherworldly as i imagine it must have seemed at the time

yeah Lullabies to Violaine has terrible mastering, go with the Pink Opaque it's their best comp

did their original releases sound good, at least? i should probably make sure i don't accidentally purchase an OG copy of a poorly mastered record

yes, they sound great - this is the way to go IMO:

https://www.discogs.com/Cocteau-Twins-Cocteau-Twins-Singles-Collection/master/5467

the original vinyl and CD releases sound great, the CD remasters are a little hot but not terrible and frankly they fucked up Lullabies to Violaine... no clue about any reissued vinyl

^^ yeah, and on the plus side I bet original CD versions of those singles are cheap

honestly, the reissue of Heaven and Las Vegas that i have seems to be panned by everyone for having absolutely disastrous sound. i guess i blew my ears out playing drums in a concrete basement, growing up, but it still sounds fucking amazing to me. so i'm not too nitpicky

some of the greatest musical moments of my life have been in extremely poor listening circumstances, whether that was listening to a release in mitigated circumstances or listening to an amazing live performance in the middle of a push and pull of bodies

The Spangle Maker: FUCK YEAH

well that came out of nowhere from the end. jfc. i love you all <3

The Spangle Maker: FUCK YEAH

otm

was the spangle maker not on treasure? it's from 1984? what, they're just releasing the spangle maker as a non-album single like it's no big deal? wtf

they have a ton of non-album material!

i don't deserve this. none of us deserve this

The Spangle Maker EP has Pearly Dewdrops' Drops on it!

wow, you haven't heard Love's Easy Tears yet, have you... it's not on Stars and Topsoil

Blue Bell Knoll is on Boulder Mtn in southern Utah, a little above 11000 feet. Feels a bit out of place since you have this enormous high plateau surrounded by your typical southern Utah rocky desert. I planned to hike to Blind Lake, and once I got there I looked at my GPS map and noticed Blue Bell Knoll was on top of the ridge behind the lake. I also had no idea it was a real place until that moment! Honestly the lake was much prettier than the knoll itself, but for their names it's vice versa. I think I read that nobody in the band has gone up there, they just read the name somewhere and liked the sound of it.

Is there a reason they released so much non-LP stuff?

The 80s was an era where bands released a lot of EPs

I suppose. They seem to have more than most. Maybe it's just that they have more quality non album output. Or that other bands active in the 80s that I listen to are the anomaly for having so little.

The UK seemed to care more about singles than albums in the 80s, too... so many US versions of 80s UK albums included a single that wasn't originally on it but was released around the same time (ie the US version of Meat is Murder with How Soon is Now? on it, or PC&L getting Blue Monday added)