Cocteau Twins have a very odd career shape.
It starts logically enough - first few records they are shaking off influences.
Garlands - OKAY
Lullabies - OKAY
Peppermint Pig - OKAY
Then then bloom into themselves:
Sunburst and Snowblind - SUBLIME!
Head Over Heels - SUBLIMEST!
The Spangle Maker - SUBLIMEST!
"Song to The Siren" (essentially a Cocteaus release) - SUBLIME!
But then they cross over into The Zone of Frou Frou Intensification
Treasure - JUST TOO-TOO PRECIOUS
(I have actually come to like this album more but at the time I spurned it - didn't buy it despite being a huge fan up to that point. There's some great songs like "Lorelei" but the Victoriana girls names thing is a lickle bit ick)
And then I lost track of the Cocteaus during the dreary midriff of the Eighties.
There is a run of releases - 3 EPs and a mini-LP:
Aikea-Guinea - HUH
Tiny Dynamine - HUH
Echoes in A Shallow Bay - HUH
Victorialand (just Robin and Liz on their own) - HUH
I didn't buy any of these and despite repeated attempts over the years, have never been able to get into them, with the exception of "Aikea-Guinea" the song, which is lovely.
I can't even remember the music on these releases. Just a faint after-sense of it being a bit too fiddly and decorative
I mean, yes, yes, Sylvère Lotringer did say "beauty will be amnesiac or will not be at all" but I don't think he quite meant this...
Yet a lot of fans rate them.
And each release reached #1 in the Independent Charts
And then we get to the strange bit of the career arc - suddenly you get a string of greatness again
Love's Easy Tears / Those Eyes That Mouth - SUBLIMEST!
The Moon and the Melodies - SUBLIME!
Blue Bell Knoll - SUBLIMEST!
And then things start to tail off again after this unexpected resurgence
Heaven or Las Vegas - FINE
(actually grown to like this more than I did at the time)
Four-Calendar Cafe - OKAY
(never bothered even listening at the time; it seems pleasant now, overproduced, a sense of a band losing its way)
Milk & Kisses - LET US DRAW A DISCREET VEIL....
So what happened with the middle period?
The mini-LP Victorialand is named after a region of Antarctica.
Then there's the title of "Aikea-Guinea"...
Did Robin and Liz get too cozily domestic, cuddled up on the sofa watching David Attenborough nature documentaries?
But it's not like Cocteau Twins reinvented themselves with the return-to-sublime phase, or even go back to a rawer, more eerie sound that they had earlier on.
They continued the smoothing-out, edging-towards-commercial trajectory, it's just they wrote better melodies - melody just seems to bubble out of them like an unquenchable spring - and Liz is singing sublimely.
What other groups go off the boil like that and then go on the boil again?
Of course you may disagree and think the Treasure to Victorialand phase is their best phase.
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ZFFI obviously a twist on the ZFI or Zone of Fruitless Intensification as explicated here
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Then again, as Alfred Hitchcock said, "self-plagiarism is style"
My own thoughts on style, which once achieved seems almost inevitably to set the artist (or genre) on the path to the Zone of Fruitless Intensification
I dunno, everything they did sounded pretty much the same to me, and it was all acceptably above average.
ReplyDeleteA true 7/10 band. The poncey Oasis.
Count me as one of those who thinks Treasure to Victorialand is their Imperial phase. Although I do also enjoy the near-peaks of Head Over Heels at one end and Blue Bell Knoll at the other.
ReplyDeleteI think so much of it is context-dependent. Treasure was the first album of theirs that I heard, and I had no real context or expectations for them. When I heard Liz Fraser singing “Peep-Bo, peach glow”, it blew my mind. It also fixed forever my idea of what the Cocteau Twins ought to sound like. From there I discovered Pearly Dewdrops Drop, which was the best-known of their songs, and possibly still is. And then I went and spent my own money on Aikea-Guinea and the two subsequent EPs. All of which I still love.
My kids were arguing the other day over whether Heaven or Las Vegas or Treasure was the better album. I enjoyed being able to pull the rock snob move of telling them that, actually, all the Cocteaus’ best work is available on non-album 12 inchers.
And something else that was very important at the time: Treasure was the first 4AD record sleeve I ever saw. 40 years on I can see why it’s a bit of a frou-frou overdose - more so than for the music. But at the time it definitely added something to their appeal
DeleteI knew there'd be at least one person who thought this midriff-drift was their absolute peak phase!
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