Because Abba have just done it, the Cocteau Twins are the last indomitable: no live reunion, no album comeback, not for all money in the world. The reasons are very earthly: singer Liz Fraser and guitarist Robin Guthrie were a few, there was fundamental. Love is transient, the sound of the Cocteau Twins remains. And it is anything but earthly. From 1981 the band developed music behind the gray walls of the Scottish industrial city of Grangemouth that defies gravity and lives in the clouds.
Fixed stars: The LPS
Treasure (1984)
First of all: the drum Machine on Treasure sounds terrible! However, what hardly plays a role, the children build their most beautiful castles on the beach with the mushiest silt. Even after the thousandth of hearing, it remains inconceivable as to the handout, the young band still built the songs of their third LP. Logic is not recognizable, neither in Liz Fraser’s language nor in the structure of the songs. Orientation give some reference points: Kate Bush, Goth-Romantik, the artistic vision of the 4AD founder Ivo Watts-Russell, on the label of which the band finds their homeland and to which they give the first piece of this plate.
Six stars
Blue Bell Knoll (1988)
After first years like in the intoxication, the band treats itself to a breathing space in 1987, then with Blue Bell Knoll, it reveals a new chapter: Unlike on the early LPS, Blue Bell Knoll is no longer on the production, everything sounds crystal clear, some even danceable, a few of the beats come from the same kit that Soul II also use. The album laid the foundation for the commercial success of the Cocteau Twins in the USA, the single “Carolyn’s Fingers” is a hit in college radio. Liz Fraser discovers her love for fantastic objects in the song titles, introduces “A Kissed Out Red Floatboat” and the “Spooning Good Singing Gum”.
Five stars
Heaven Or Las Vegas (1990)
Suddenly explicitly: “My dreams are low, they’re Sick and must be drossed / they’re Young Girl’s Dreams.” The title of this song is “Fotzepolitic”, perhaps the best gag in the cocteau twins cosmos, which is anything but humorless. The music about the text about vaginal self -determination is absolutely perfect, like everything on this LP. On Heaven or Las Vegas, the Cocteau Twins apply the divine formula to the zeitgeist. The album sounds like 1990, the year in which the limitless imagination of the 80s connects to the groove of the 90s. This one time the Cocteau Twins are actually new pop. Or, as you define it yourself in the first piece of the plate: “Cherry-Colored Funk”.
Six stars
Fixed stars: The EPS
AIKEA Guinea (1985)
The outstanding tracks that the Cocteau Twins absorb after the album Treasure end up on EPS; In 1986 the two meditative dream plates Victorialand (five stars) and, together with Harold Budd, The Moon and the Melodies (three and a half stars), the two meditative dream panels appear in 1986. AIKEA-Guinea is one of these EPS, the chorus of the title song leads in spheres in which Pop actually has no business, but the instrumental post-rock composition “Rococo”, a forerunner for everything Mogwai has ever done.
Five and a half stars
Tiny Dynamine (1985)
Once again four pieces, in the text of the magical “Pink Orange Red”, Liz Fraser sings “Sultitan Itan” and “Plain Tiger”, then two of the following pieces are called. The lyrical arch results in an outstanding intensity at the brevity, which many complete albums do not begin. In between is the instrumental piece “Ribbed and Veined”, which sounds as if the band tried to transfer the pastel-colored “Miami Vice” feeling into the gray Grangemouth.
Five and a half stars
Love’s Easy Tears (1986)
Already in love today? “Those Eyes, that Mouth” will take care of this. It is the second of three inviolable songs of this EP, which for many characterizes the highest of all heights in this discography. Liz Fraser sings manic and tender in the same breath, however you succeed. Guthries guitars envelop the vocals, the bass of Simon Raymonde jumps around it, the drum Machine is still billo, but the band now knows what to do so that the device is listed.
Six stars
Black hole
Garlands (1982)
If you only think of milk and honey on the Cocteau Twins, you have to hear Garlands. The first song is called “Blood Bitch”, the guitar is reminiscent of Killing Joke, Liz Fraser’s singing of Berlin Wave singers like Bettina Köster from Malaria! Or Anja Huwe from Xmal Germany. Bassist is still a founding member Will Heggie, who is based on Peter Hook’s manic game for Joy Division. There is hardly any light into this postpunk dystopia from Scottish suburbia, a decomposing horror track like “The Hollow Men” did not get even Bauhaus, only “Wax and Wane” is an indication of what follows in the near future.
Four and a half stars
Individual planet
Robin Guthrie – Carousel (2009)
Without the voice of Liz Fraser, the guitarist’s solo work is happy to lose itself in a harmony, other cooperations are completely missing or end up on average, but the soundtrack work with the American ambient avant-avant-gardist Harold Budd are among the highlights. Carousel is a stroke of luck: Sometimes Guthrie moves safely on Cocteau-Twins-Terrain, sometimes he extends his cosmos with lounge progue in the style of Air.
Four stars
Lost Horizons – in Quiet Moments (2021)
Bassist and Bella-Union label founder Simon Raymonde founded the Snowbird project in 2014 with Stephanie Dosen, which fails because the singer tries to follow fraser unnecessarily. Raymonde’s following project Lost Horizons frees himself from this load by taking over different singers. The first LP still sounds tidy, the double album in Quiet Moments gives the guests John Grant or the band Borridge radio more space. Karen Peris, singer of the US DreamPop band The Innocence Mission, is on both records as a guest. Heretical thought: If the Cocteau Twins (among other things, of course) should be given without Liz Fraser, please with Karen Peris as a singer.
Four and a half stars
Expired star
Robin Guthrie / Mark Gardener – Universal Road (2015)
Robin Guthrie and Ride singer Mark Gardener: A wonderful couple in theory. But the album sounds as if Gardener had chopped into Guthries sound system and pressed vocals on instrumental traces there without instructions. His songs on the acoustic guitar are even more bad, which Guthrie supplements with the motivation of a person who has to go back to the discounter after the Penny large shopping because she has forgotten the butter.
Two stars
Milky Way
Lullabies to violaine vol. 1 & 2 (2 0 0 5)
Two times two CDs with all tracks of 16 EPS/singles. A total of 230 minutes of music, a compendium of beauty and uniqueness.
Six stars
Liz Fraser’s comet flights
The Cocteau Twins are still active because Liz Fraser refiness from colleagues: “Primitive Painters” by Felt (1985) and “Candleland” by Echo & the Bunnymen singer Ian McCulloch (1989) are the biggest deeds. And maybe this Mortal coil, the collective idea of Ivo Watts-Russell, would have been inserted if Liz Fraser would not have interpreted the Tim-Buckley piece “Song of the Siren” on the first album It’ll End in Tears. At the end of the 90s, she sings “Teardrop” by Massive Attack, can be heard on recordings by Peter Gabriel and Yann Tiersen, her trip-hoppy solo singing “Underwater” (four stars) appears in 2000; In 2009 the digital tango “Moses” (three and a half stars) followed. Then the break: Apart from less soundtrack work with her partner Damon Reece, Liz Fraser only appears in 2020 when she sings the play “Cannibal” with the British folk memory Sam Lee his single “The Moon Shines Bright” and Sigur-Ros singer Jónsi. Her latest commitment: “Tales from the Trash Stratum”, hidden on the Blu-Ray edition of Daniel Lopatins Weird-Electronica masterpiece Magic Oneohtrix Point Never from autumn 2021.