Cocteau Twins : Classic or Dud

I'm struggling to remember how I even discovered them. I know Heaven or Las Vegas and Treasure were used bin blind buys around the same time but I can't remember why I was prompted to blind buy them in the first place. At any rate, it was right around the time they released Milk and Kisses so my timing in becoming a Cocteaus fan was quite excellent.

I bought Blue Bell Knoll when it came out, based on a (positive) review I read (I wanna say in the Village Voice?) that described the album as "avant-garde brunch music" or something like that. I just had to see for myself.

like Karl, I always dug 'em when I heard 'em during their prime, but I had a somewhat ill-advised disinclination to listen to english college rock, as I found Depeche Mode/Smiths/ Cure people to be objectionable at the time. And in '94, a coworker at a label I worked for played FCC in the office a lot, and many of those songs stayed with me…

But four years ago, I thought "I'm gonna really check 'em out." And so, during the final year and a half of 30 years as a New York resident, and in the first year of my daughter's life, Cocteaus was key. Evidently Fraser held her and Guthrie's baby while she was recording "Heaven…" and probly going up this thread, I think there is a post from me talking about watching kids gambol in Prospect park while listening to that song or the whole album, thinking that my child is going to do that in a couple years. And one night, I was at the Adirondack bar in windsor terrace with a pal who also likes 'em, and "Iceblink Luck" came on, and goddamn did that sound right…

I got Stars and Topsoil and I noticed that "Orange Appled" has this bell ornamentation that sounds just like that on "Do they Know it's xmas"…must be a synclavier sound… and you guys have reminded that I wanted to listen to Milk and Kisses, which I am doing as I write… pleasant but it does seem they were over it…

I heard "Wax And Wane" on the radio and got Head Over Heels and Sunburst as birthday or Christmas presents in late 1983, Treasure was the first one to come out where I was fully on board and I remember actually reading about it in Maximum Rock And Roll!

Given how sui generis and ahead of their time (or outside of time altogether) they still sound, I can't imagine what it must've been like to have been a contemporaneous fan.

it's funny but Love's Easy Tears and then BBK are what made me lose interest at the time, I only picked up the post-Victorialand records in the last 20 years.

Blue Bell Knoll is still, and will forever be, my favourite CT album ever. And if I absolutely gun-to-head had to pick one song, it'd be 'Itchy Glowbo Blow'.

This is such a bittersweet thing, because I think of this band as so much a band with a watershed.

And I'm kind of jealous of people who come to them as 'getting the whole discography all at once' so they don't have to experience them in a watersheddy way, they can just be "ah, all this stuff is so great!" and see it as a complete set.

Because to me, it was just so much, at the time, like Blue Bell Knoll felt like the end of something. Half of it was amazing - the singles (which I think came out as e.p.s earlier?) were amazing. And the rest of it was so underwhelming. And from then on, they weren't the same band, and it pains me to listen to anything after Love's Easy Tears.

(Maybe this is teenage tribalism, and I should just get over it - like, before BBK they were a weird 4AD band that me and my weird gothy friends loved; and after BBK like my brother and his yuppie mates all got into them and that was awful. I shouldn't hold it against them that their audience changed? But at the same time, every time I play Lullabies to Violane, there is a definite point where I have to get up and stop the music. Oh god I feel like the hater at a love-in now.)

But during that period in the mid-80s when they were amazing, and had such an extraordinary run of fantastic e.p.s and albums, they were utterly untouchable, there was nothing in the world as beautiful as what they did.

I'm glad someone else besides me can hear a difference in the post-Victorialand material

I like it all now (especially HOLV, my god) but at the time it seemed less focused, like some of the edges had been smoothed out

I was a fan at the time as well and I felt the same way as you, but after HoLV. I thought then, and still do now, that HoLV was right up there with the earlier stuff, but FCC was a real nosedive in quality and the rot really set in with M&K.

xp

Heh, for me in the US their deal with Capitol Records meant I could A. buy the album at the nearby mall instead of having to spend all day busing to the cool record stores in Montrose and B. it would only cost $16 instead of $22. I will always have a soft spot for Best Buy because in the early 90s they started selling CDs as loss leaders right when 4AD started their US operation, which meant all the Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance back catalog (and new 4AD stuff) was now available on CD for $9-12 an album!

did the change to using english sentences coincide with the major label (and those horrible covers)? not heard BBK for a while (bought on tape...) but in my memory that's the last good lp.

Four-Calendar Cafe was the watershed (heh) album for being able to understand most of what Fraser was singing.

(they were still on 4AD through Heaven or Las Vegas)

I've always considered HOLV to be their peak. Felt like they were finally entering into the (alternative) mainstream, and you could even understand a few of the lyrics ("Las Vegas", something about burning a playhouse down, etc.) I saw them on that tour, with Galaxie 500, and you could kind of sense that both bands were reaching the end of something. Not that I expected much in the way of onstage animation, but both bands seemed unusually morose.

Am I the only one who thought for years that it was actually Tiny Dynamite?

during the final year and a half of 30 years as a New York resident, and in the first year of my daughter's life, Cocteaus was key. Evidently Fraser held her and Guthrie's baby while she was recording "Heaven…" and probly going up this thread, I think there is a post from me talking about watching kids gambol in Prospect park while listening to that song or the whole album, thinking that my child is going to do that in a couple years.

love this story, veronica. i don't have children, but there is something to that connection that i recognize. it's strange to think about - baby vibes. it's definitely not the pooping and the falling over. but maybe instead it's the weirdness of a baby being the dense center of a lifetime of potential emotions and feelings and memories and heartbreak, still waiting to be formed. so the crying, basically

Mark me down as well that Love's Easy Tears and BBK were effectively the end of my real interest at the time, to the point I couldn't be arsed going through to Glasgow to see them touring BBK.

Actually the Harold Budd album might be what broke the back for a lot of people and the obvious high points of BBK weren't enough to win them back?

It probably wasn't until the BBC Sessions came out I realised what I'd missed out on and rediscovered the late era (because listening to them on the radio at the time didn't click).

Irrespective of the reputation it has built since, my memory of the time is that Treasure was considered a bit of a let down - which, since the releases before it were Sunburst & Snowblind and PDD/Spangle Maker maybe isn't that surprising.

Victorialand was the last one for which Vaughan Oliver/23 Envelope did the cover, so that certainly marked the end of something.

amazing to hear these stories from you all. it's so hard to imagine being let down by Treasure, i mean, that's a greatest hits album!

i think i will always hold a special place for Victorialand, because it is incredibly hard to pull off a catchy pop album with no bass

man, not for me re: Treasure, I listened to that thing every day in early 1985

The only stumbling block I initially had re: Treasure is the drum machine. But still, Treasure more than lives up to its name.

I think the biggest criticism was that the sides started and ended well but sagged in the middle? Trying to remember reviews I read once or maybe twice over 35 years ago.

bought the odd cocteau's single during the 80s after hearing 'orange appled' on a melody maker giveaway single. and as much as i liked those, i really rather took them for granted at the time - they were just always there, releasing cocteau twinsy music. not quite enough rough edges for me as a teen. i go in phases with them now, still never heard anything beyond 'heaven or las vegas' though

Also it's hilarious to me that sleeve read about them in MRR.

it was a Tesco Vee column about his favorite records of the moment! also how I got turned on to Swans "Cop", lol

The only stumbling block I initially had re: Treasure is the drum machine.

when i think about it, i think the stumbling block for enjoying their music was also the drums, but not specifically the drum machine (or Treasure), just the 80s drum production in general. the smiths, the replacements, cocteau twins - for a long time i kind of nodded along to all of them but found the production too distracting. at some point, though, several years ago, i finally got used to that sound and it was no longer an obstacle.

and truth be told, a gated drum can sound really good in the right conditions (like the cocteau twins catalog)

my cocteaus origin story is probably not that unique—

was working at a used music store where i was solely responsible for section maintenance of all vinyl stock. i was just turned 20 at the time and had been a hiphop head most of my life. while working my way through the stacks, i would encounter these bands that had rather large sections and which i had never heard of — bands like blue oyster cult, the jam, yes, etc. huge names obviously, but i didn't know them. the cocteaus had one of the largest sections in the whole store and i was mystified by this group i had never even heard of that had a shit ton of records and no photos of the band on any them — what was this??? employees were allowed to use the store's stock as a library of sorts, so before weekends, i'd go into one of these sections and grab six or seven records to listen to on my days off. if i liked them enough, i'd buy two or three of the records and make a mixtape of the highlights of the rest. when i did that with the cocteaus, i think the first thing i put on after getting home that friday night was sunburst and snowblind and i have rarely experienced a feeling like that: a simultaneous feeling of "WHAT THE HELL IS THIS??" and "WHY DO I LIKE THIS????"

good times.

i also worked in a used music store when i was 20, but i was too busy dealing the manager's insistence that kasabian and keane were the best bands of the moment to explore any good music

it was a Tesco Vee column about his favorite records of the moment! also how I got turned on to Swans "Cop", lol

I'm surprised, no shocked, that the guy from screeching weasel didn't write an angry letter of complaint about this

I had a manager who didn't actually like Bo Bice but thought I was not being fair in refusing to listen to him or take him seriously as an artist

xp I heard them first in college radio rotation and mentally filed them with other 4AD/gothy bands I wasn't into in the early 80s ... they were too dreamy and ambient at a time I wanted loud and fast

much later, after they'd broken up, I bought a CD or two that got a lot of play at home, they become one of a few bands that my wife and I both love, over time we got copies of all the studio albums and the EP compilations and the BBC Sessions, and we continue to play the whole discography so much we have to take breaks sometimes to keep from wearing it out

xp NickB I actually wrote in a vehement defense/response to his famous complaint letter about Sonic Youth et al!! I think they printed it. We exchanged a letter after that and agreed to disagree iirc

Haha amazing! Scans please! (on the relevant thread of course)

to the point I couldn't be arsed going through to Glasgow to see them touring BBK

lol I hummed and hawed about that gig for weeks (as I was round about the same "get off the bus" phase as you and Branwell) and it didn't sell out so I decided to turn up on the night to pay at the door. It turned out they'd guestlisted so many people they hit capacity and we couldn't get in.
We spent the night listening to an old guy singing folk songs in the Tolbooth.

Keep seeing BBK and thinking you all mean Boy Better Know, someone get liz on the next skepta record plz

Oh shit, it finally just clicked. My 'in' re: Cocteau Twins was three-fold: a) I was way into Lush in the mid-'90s and became aware at some point of who was responsible for the sound of Spooky, b) I was becoming more aware of 4AD as a label shared by a number of latter-day and not particularly '4AD-ish' 4AD acts that I liked (Breeders, Lisa Germano, etc.), and c) I used to drive around at night listening to this syndicated radio show Echoes (which I guess still exists!) and that featured a weird melange of electronic and experimental and world and new age music and I'm almost certain that was where I first actually heard CT.

I think I listened to all the albums and Lullabies To Violane in the space of half a year in 2004/2005. Couldn't stop myself, needed it.

so can we re-do the entire cocteau twins ballot poll now please? (only half jk)

We could do a Lullabies to Violaine poll

I had a quiet pint in the East Hill pub in Wandsworth on Monday afternoon, trying to summon the ghost of Vaughan Oliver (it's directly opposite 17-19 Alma Rd, which is Beggars Group now, so still technically 4AD I guess, but back in the day it really was just 4AD). I like to imagine I sat at the table where he came up with the Xmal Deutschland logo, or the Come On Pilgrim concept, etc. I listened to I Am The Crime by Wolfgang Press as I walked along St John's Hill towards Clapham but I just couldn't make it 1986.

So, yeah, BBK forever. It's the first one I heard, and it's the best.

ha, and the first without VO artwork!
For me the Cocteaus break in three: debut to LET (high Cocteaus), BBK/HOLV (joyous pop Cocteaus) and then post 4AD whatever

Good thread revival and hurrah for Karl realizing why the EPs are urgent and key.

How DID I first hear them? Pretty sure it might have been a mention or two in the 3rd edition of Trouser Press plus starting work at KLA at UCLA in 1989. Also a vinyl copy of Treasure was added to the collection around that time -- found an import CD soon after and that was that, off to the races by early 1990 (which helped as well when "Soon" was released soon thereafter but I digress). Happily it all meant that I was so utterly soaked in the band that by the time of HOLV I was there from the first single on -- in fact now that I think about it, the very first issue of Melody Maker I ever picked up was the cover story when "Iceblink Luck" came out! Still have the issue! And saw them in December of that year with Lush opening, that was a double bill and a half.

Anyway, realizing I never added it to this thread in particular when it ran, here's me in the Guardian a few years back on ten of their best. Don't question me, I am biased and I am right.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2016/feb/24/cocteau-twins-10-of-the-best

re: cover art on BBK

well, it's by Paul West, who worked with VO... not like they went with Hipgnosis or something

Oh, I think I may have bought the Doom Generation soundtrack before any Cocteaus albums proper, so 'Summerblink' may have been the first song I heard of theirs that I identified as a Cocteau Twins song.

as we mentioned on another recent Cocteaus thread, don't overlook their lost song (appearing nowhere else!) from the Judge Dredd soundtrack:

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

4AD meets 2000 AD

The drum intro from Persephone was an advert earlier this year.

the thread that I posted in 2 years ago that I was referring to is the dedicated HoLV thread…and I also asked therein: what are the antecedents of this band? I read somewhere that as high-haired scottish late teens/20 somethings, they were way into Siouxie… and that they collaborated with Harold Budd suggests that they had an interest in minimalist composition…but I have a harder time intuiting what they must have been into initially for inspiration than I do peers like, say, MBV…would they have been into the Berlin Trilogy? and I guess Fraser likes Tim Buckley…lemme know them thoughts…

WARNING: DRUG EXPERIENCE POST
I was in my college dorm room with just my roomie/best friend. I'd taken a hit of acid and it wasn't working. Few days before I'd bought some from same guy which also didn't work, so he gave me 5 hits for free and said they work, but sorry I guess they're pretty weak. So I'm like fuck it and eat the remaining 4 tabs. As you could guess, I start tripping balls and am worried I'll have a bad trip (which is what happened the only other time I tripped hard). I knew if anything could prevent that and calm me down, it'd be Cocteau Twins. Put on "Evangeline" (this was when FCC was my go to CT). To this day I haven't felt the sort of blissful serenity that hearing that song instantly gave me. Felt like the whole universe was gently happily swaying to the tune in a hazy under the sea sort of way blah blah I'll spare you the rest of the drug trip talk.