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.
Riffing off my own point here, but when you get these kinds of pretty good but very consistent bands (New Order and REM being other examples) there is a point where if you are less than a devoted fan, their records start to become a bit redundant.
DeleteSo you are almost motivated to hear a dip in quality just to get yourself off the treadmill.
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!
DeleteI just happened to read the recent Pitchfork piece on A.R. Kane’s 69, which tells the story of how Alex and Rudy were inspired to form a group by hearing Pink Orange Red from Tiny Dynamine. So that era of the Cocteaus has definitely got something going for it.
DeleteThat was actually one of the things that got thinking me about that phase of Cocteaus and giving it a relisten - the fact that it inspired AR Kane. I was like, why that track of all the Cocteau tracks?! I guess it was the TV appearance, though, as much as the song. According to Rudy, the sight of the drum machine or was it a big tape reel, I can't remember, behind them.
DeleteI was wondering which TV show would have been putting on the Cocteau Twins in 1985, and it turns out it was The Tube, of course. I think I found the clip: https://youtu.be/MFN6BaulEX8?si=8XtoVHsl3pkdMW60
DeleteAs you say, they have a reel-to-reel behind them. A common setup for electro pop bands - first used by the Human League - and drummerless rock groups including the Sisters of Mercy and early Echo and the Bunnymen.
I have often wondered about that gear arrangement. Were the drum machines / sequencers of that time really so expensive / cumbersome / inflexible that a tape was the better option? Or was it purely for appearance?
Sorry there should have been a question mark after “ first used by the Human League”. I guess there may have been earlier examples. Kraftwerk, possibly. Tangerine Dream? But the League are the first group I can remember seeing with a reel-to-reel behind them.
DeleteWhy Pink Orange Red? Those effects-heavy arpeggiated guitar chords end up in a lot of AR Kane songs. And now I am noticing it, I can hear snippets of the Cocteau Twins all over 69. The dah-DAHH drum machine beat from When Mama Was Moth in Sulliday, for example. Many more such cases, I am sure. No surprise, obviously, given how open Alex and Rudy were in their admiration. But I hadn’t really thought about how close the connection is.
DeleteI would always point people in the direction of the EPs collection if they wanted to start listening to CT. Same way I’d point people to Substance by New Order. It’s the best, most varied representation of the band.
DeleteED -
DeleteDrum machines of the 80s were pretty clunky, and you’d struggle to get a whole set of songs stored for playback. Plus you’d have to chain them through other external effects to get anything approaching the studio sound of the songs - another layer of complexity to set up. Why not just bake it all onto a tape?
Most bands used them for partial backing tracks rather than just songs. There’s other stuff on there too besides the drums.
Neil Young strikes me as a pretty good example of an artist who has boiled and simmered. That great initial run of albums up through the Ditch Trilogy/Zuma, a couple of duds then the Rust period, followed by essentially a decade of duds, then Freedom (which is solid if you can get past the outfit he wears on the cover), Ragged Glory, Arc/Weld. Kinda hard to keep track after that.
ReplyDeleteCertain artists tend to boil and simmer with alternating albums, Prefab Sprout & Go-Betweens both come to mind.
Yeah that kinda works for Neil, but then part of his veering off in the 1980s is doing that spree of 'uncharacteristic' releases - the synth, the rockabilly etc. So not necessarily just a pure waxing and waning of quality. (I can't say I have studied the later output closely but it doesn't strike me as a return to anything like 'Cortez the Killer ' / 'Powderfinger' levels.
DeletePrefab arc is like 'good, intriguing, different' (Swoon), sublime masterpiece (Steve), sudden dip into sickly cloying (Langley Park), return to form and to Thomas Dolby (Jordan) (although listening back to it recently i didn't think it was anything near to Steve McQ in terms of a masterpiece). And then after that I kind of lose track, being a faithless fan...
Go-Betweens - well, I've never been able to get into Spring Hill Fair. So that certainly fits an off-on, off-on rhythm (I'm assuming you 'd agree that Before Hollywood and Liberty Belle are the 'on' albums). But after that again the faithless fan syndrome kicks in I'm afraid....
Seems to me that there are three sort-of-obvious models for pop music creativity: 1/ the most common, which is a burst of incredible creativity followed by a long (sometimes, eternally long) period of decline into mediocre attempts at reclaiming original glory, often hobbled by missing members, etc. (almost all bands/acts) 2/ the less common, which is a burst of occasional continued creativity, punctuated by periods of baffling mediocrity and sometimes awful music (Neil Young, the classic example) 3/ the unimpeachable long-ish burst of creativity that remains unmarred because the principals broke up or died (Beatles, but probably others). Oh, wait, maybe there's a fourth 4/ The incredible single album never matched again (Television, Burial, etc.).
ReplyDeleteLaibach once said "We do not judge Iggy Pop on his work with the Stooges. We judge him over his entire career."
DeleteHaha bless Laibach! The music never grabbed me, but they really knew how to give a good quote.
DeleteTo your excellent typology of careers, Asif, I would add a fifth pattern: the steady climb towards a peak, and then the steady decline after it. Bands that take time to find their most fully realised form, and then once they have achieved it, either keep tilling the same ground with diminishing returns, or veer away from it in a fruitless search for fresh inspiration. Examples: Talking Heads peaking with Remain in Light, or The Rolling Stones climbing to the three-album summit of Let It Bleed/Sticky Fingers/Exile on Main Street.
Prince was an odd one. For the first 15 years or so, his albums went tick-tick-boom, with the booms being Dirty Mind, Purple Rain and Sign of the Times. And then once he got into the 90s, there were barely even ticks.
Well if you judged almost any artist on their entire career, it would lower the grade considerably. Prince, Bowie, you name it. So I reckon judging an artist by the peak phase is probably more sensible. Certainly it's more generous, in a way.
DeleteAh we are in complete agreement on Prince I think. I once tabulated his peak era output as having a rhythm of KILLER-DUD-DUD-KILLER-DUD-DUD-KILLER
So that would translate to Dirty Mind/KILLER, controversy and 1999/DUD - purple rain/KILLER - around the world and Parade/DUD - and then Sign of the Times/KILLER
of course you'd have to nuance that by conceding that Controversy, 1999, Around the World, Parade all have great singles and probably or two killer deep cuts. e.g. '1999' the title track, 'Pop Life' and 'Raspberry beret' (some would say 'condition of a heart'), 'kiss'.
Lovesexy is an odd one in so far it's pretty solid all the way through but i don't think there's a classic single off it.
Maybe there's a sixth pattern - peeling the layers of the onion. Thinking of the likes of Scott Walker, Mark Hollis/Talk Talk, maybe even Robert Hampson. Starting out in some recognizable genre or another, realizing a level of commercial and/or critical success, then gradually jettisoning bits and pieces until you wind up releasing an album of breathing.
ReplyDeleteI’m the Middle Period Is Fabulous & Fertile group. After Treasure, which they hated, I think they wanted to keep pushing in ‘different’ directions and vary their sound, and their ‘get in the studio and bang a record out from scratch’ approach meant each one has its own sonic identity fuelled by the mood of the session.
ReplyDeleteThe bombast of Aikea Guinea.
The rich gloss of Echoes… and Dynamine.
The ornate acoustica of Victorialand.
And progressing by contrast to the feedback-laced ‘Love’s Easy Tears’.
It’s a band redefining their sound with each record. AND there’s some great tunes in there too.
I came to this stuff all at the same time, so it was like a treasure trove; whereas maybe if you’d tired of them in the process of the churn of the period then I can see how you might tune out.
I recently read Simon Raymonde’s very polite autobiography, and it does seem like after their speed-fuelled run from 1982-86 they kind of got drawn into the slightly lazy ‘we have our own studio / one album every few years / becoming dependent on royalties and earnings / it becoming a bit of a career’ spiral.
ReplyDeleteYou could sort of feel it in the music at the time. That drop-off with Four Calendar Cafe, and the slow whittling away of their power, concessions to what they thought might be more marketable etc. and some almost cliched label disinterest.
Ah does he not dish the dirt, then?
DeleteNah. It seems he was perpetually on the outside looking in a bit. And maybe the feeling was that the harshest anecdotes are already out there so why dig them up again, but it was quite a mild read.
DeleteI think he's just too nice a guy. And I mean that in a good way.
Must be kinda hard to be the third wheel in a band when you're not the front man (e.g. Dean Wareham.) I've always similarly felt for the Greg Nortons and the Whoever Played Bass In Spacemen 3s of the world. Not that their bandmates were couples, though they certainly bickered as such.
DeleteThere was a TV series in the UK about a decade ago that was based on Pete Frame's rock family trees, and I was always struck by fabulously wealthy boomer rockers like Jeff Lynne sitting by the pool outside their gigantic mansions, bitterly recalling some minor sleight they received from their bass player in 1973.
DeleteIt was an incredible insight into the human condition.