Artists
Biography
Elizabeth Fraser GUITARS Robin Guthrie BASS GUITAR Simon Raymonde
When Cocteau Twins first emerged, the trio was likened to Siouxsie & The Banshees. How hindsight makes us smile. Truly, as each of their records cumulatively proved, the Twins never sounded like anything, anyone, anywhere. Ultimately, after nine albums, and 16 EPs/singles, they sounded less like a band, more an element of nature. A freak of nature, in fact.
Which was very 4AD. Label founder Ivo Watts-Russell has always claimed that his aim was to unleash music that was timeless, free of any trend, movement or era. Looking back, to their long-playing debut Garlands, the Cocteaus never sounded like the Banshees. Did Liz Fraser replicate Siouxsie’s strident wail? Hardly. As bassist Will Heggie joined Liz and guitarist Robin Guthrie in the first version of the Cocteaus trio, they charted their own course. There’s too much music, too much choice, to contain everyone’s favourite Cocteau moment, but at least ’Stars and Topsoil’ can plot that course.
The band’s name came from an old Simple Minds track. But it all truly began when Robin and Will, old mates from school, saw Liz dance in a disco. The location was unsunny, petro-chemical centre Grangemouth, situated between Glasgow and Edinburgh - a town lovingly described by Robin as "a toilet". The boys figured that, if Liz danced that well, then she’d doubtless sing as well too. What a stroke of precognitive genius. She didn’t want to join as such, but relented months down the line, and only started opening her mouth when she thought the other two weren’t listening.
Robin’s chance meeting with The Birthday Party - very early 4AD signings - saw a tape go to Ivo and to John Peel: more perfect planning. A palpably thrilled Ivo encouraged them to record more, and so a debut single was shelved, and Garlands appeared. ’Blind Dumb Deaf’, the compilation’s opening track, is immediate proof of innate mercurialism. Typically, a town such as Grangemouth would inspire something so paradoxical: extraordinary sound, stunning melody, beguiling lyrics (fresh air in a toilet environment). Haunting, spellbound, diaphanous, "frosting of sweetness" critics wore out the adjective manual and we all had a field day. This was rock (music), but made of an ingenious material.
Peel and other Radio 1 stalwarts were on board from the start too, and they quickly recorded a four-track Peel session (which was added to Garlands when the CD was released), and the Cocteaus were more or less launched. They stayed a trio, with drum machine on board (never to be replaced, except live in later years), in order to preserve their tightly knit, private world. That bond was broken when, after two EPs, Lullabies and Peppermint Pig, and a European tour Will Heggie left (amicably) and Robin and Liz (by then, a couple) carried on as a duo. They subsequently recorded the Head Over Heels album and Sunburst And Snowblind EP in 1983, where the debut album’s inherent starkness was warmed up and expanded. ’Sugar Hiccup’ comes from both releases, while ’My Love Paramour’ is an album cut. Already Liz was forming her own language: recognisable words emerged and submerged in a maelstrom of her own, coated and drowned in Robin’s guitar. Her song titles did them justice: When Mama Was Moth, Glass Candle Grenades - She became another instrument, and more.
WEEK 2 ADDITION
At this point, Ivo got Robin and Liz to record Tim Buckley’s ’Song To The Siren’ for what became an extended (over three albums) Ivo-led studio project under the collective title This Mortal Coil. The Cocteaus only contributed to the first TMC album (It’ll End In Tears): they clearly had other plans. Asking bassist Simon Raymonde, formerly of The Drowning Craze, to join, was one, and as a trio again, recorded The Spangle Maker EP, which included the majestic ’Pearly-Dewdrops’ Drops’, the band’s first Top 30 hit (and still among fans’s favourite ever Cocteaus tracks). With Simon on board, the band developed bottom end, and deeper eddies and currents, but a lightness of touch too: they were evolving with each release. Liz, especially, was pushing herself further adrift from the shore.
Bolstered by all their success (number one albums and EPs in the independent charts, in the days when that really meant something), the Cocteaus played Royal Festival Hall. Back in the studio, 1984’s Treasure added more layers of ornateness, opaqueness, stateliness.This time, Liz’s songtitles were names: not just ’Lorelei’ and ’Pandora’ but ’Ivo’, ’Persophone’ and ’Aloysius’ too. Liz, in her naivety, didn’t account for the way people put those titles and the album cover (all lace and shadows) together, and came up with all that ’fey Victoriana’/mythology subtext that the trio hated. The music, however, continued its own resolute path, through three EPs in 1985: the first being Aikea-Guinea (which donates the title track).
However, at this point, the next two, Tiny Dynamine (which donates ’Pink Orange Red’), and Echoes In A Shallow Bay (likewise ’Pale Clouded White’: Liz had turned to names of butterflies now), were the start of an increasingly abstract, ’floating’ sound that ended up in Robin and Liz, minus Simon, recording the largely acoustic, un-percussive Victorialand (’Lazy Calm’ and ’The Thinner The Air’ were the album’s respective opener and closer). It might have been the result of founding their own studio in leafy South-West, enclave Twickenham, by the Thames, and christened September Sound, as both the latter EPs were recorded there. But then again, the subsequent single Love’s Easy Tears (all new tracks again) was a more traditional Cocteaus release - in fact, as the B-side ’Orange Appled’ illustrates, it was a forecast of the trio’s more commercial mindset that was later to blossom,. But the next release was another offshoot: The Moon & Melodies, a non-Cocteaus album but a collaboration between Robin, Liz and Simon with minimalist/ambient jazz pianist Harold Budd (instigated by a TV company who were planning a series about collaborations. The series got cancelled but the recording went ahead).
WEEK 3 ADDITION
1987 was a silent year: all that was visible was Robin producing The Gun Club. A year later, the Cocteaus re-emerged, warmer and lusher than ever, but more concentrated and concise too, with Blue Bell Knoll. A year later, they refined the step-forward with 1989's Heaven Or Las Vegas. From the former, the joyous 'Carolyn's Fingers' confirms that they'd found a way to bolt pop principals onto their uncanny undercarriage. Was it any coincidence that Robin and Liz had had a baby girl in the interim? Is the latter - marked by an increasingly audible release of tension and surge of unfettered love - the trio's collective favourite Cocteaus album? That it provides three tracks (a tender 'Fifty-Fifty Clown', a sweeping 'Iceblink Luck' and a regal 'Heaven Or Las Vegas') to 'Stars and Topsoil' suggests it might be.
The compilation closes with 'Watchlar', the B-side to 'Iceblink Luck', released in 1990. It's a tender, restrained finale, as restrained as usual Cocteaus album finals are barnstorming. It's also a perfect encapsulation of the band's growth since Garlands: from the jagged edges of early adulthood through the arrival and dispatching of inner demons to the calmer acceptance of middle age. By no means full circle, more an arrival.
Afterwards, Cocteau Twins were to leave 4AD. They'd been part of the family for years, helping define what the press used to call the 4AD 'sound', and it's almost always the way that family members must sometime leave the nest. There had been resentment on the band's part, when the Cocteaus first won widespread success (especially on radio), but under the guise of This Mortal Coil, with another person's song. Though Liz has since admitted that, with hindsight, the band had personally been unhappy during this time, and blamed the song and circumstances for it. But the die was cast, and they left, for Fontana, and two more albums (Four Calendar Café and Milk And Kisses) that were to close the Cocteaus catalogue. It had run its course: now this family was to go its own ways. Liz is currently recording a solo album, Robin has a new band, Violet Indiana, and Simon runs the Bella Union label, and produces too.
The Cocteau Twins' magical music box is now closed, but what wonders it contained when opened - bewitching songs and glittering soundscapes; music that could never have anything subsequent compared to it.
Martin Aston July 2000.
When Cocteau Twins first emerged, the trio was likened to Siouxsie & The Banshees. How hindsight makes us smile. Truly, as each of their records cumulatively proved, the Twins never sounded like anything, anyone, anywhere. Ultimately, after nine albums, and 16 EPs/singles, they sounded less like a band, more an element of nature. A freak of nature, in fact.
Which was very 4AD. Label founder Ivo Watts-Russell has always claimed that his aim was to unleash music that was timeless, free of any trend, movement or era. Looking back, to their long-playing debut Garlands, the Cocteaus never sounded like the Banshees. Did Liz Fraser replicate Siouxsie’s strident wail? Hardly. As bassist Will Heggie joined Liz and guitarist Robin Guthrie in the first version of the Cocteaus trio, they charted their own course. There’s too much music, too much choice, to contain everyone’s favourite Cocteau moment, but at least ’Stars and Topsoil’ can plot that course.
The band’s name came from an old Simple Minds track. But it all truly began when Robin and Will, old mates from school, saw Liz dance in a disco. The location was unsunny, petro-chemical centre Grangemouth, situated between Glasgow and Edinburgh - a town lovingly described by Robin as "a toilet". The boys figured that, if Liz danced that well, then she’d doubtless sing as well too. What a stroke of precognitive genius. She didn’t want to join as such, but relented months down the line, and only started opening her mouth when she thought the other two weren’t listening.
Robin’s chance meeting with The Birthday Party - very early 4AD signings - saw a tape go to Ivo and to John Peel: more perfect planning. A palpably thrilled Ivo encouraged them to record more, and so a debut single was shelved, and Garlands appeared. ’Blind Dumb Deaf’, the compilation’s opening track, is immediate proof of innate mercurialism. Typically, a town such as Grangemouth would inspire something so paradoxical: extraordinary sound, stunning melody, beguiling lyrics (fresh air in a toilet environment). Haunting, spellbound, diaphanous, "frosting of sweetness" critics wore out the adjective manual and we all had a field day. This was rock (music), but made of an ingenious material.
Peel and other Radio 1 stalwarts were on board from the start too, and they quickly recorded a four-track Peel session (which was added to Garlands when the CD was released), and the Cocteaus were more or less launched. They stayed a trio, with drum machine on board (never to be replaced, except live in later years), in order to preserve their tightly knit, private world. That bond was broken when, after two EPs, Lullabies and Peppermint Pig, and a European tour Will Heggie left (amicably) and Robin and Liz (by then, a couple) carried on as a duo. They subsequently recorded the Head Over Heels album and Sunburst And Snowblind EP in 1983, where the debut album’s inherent starkness was warmed up and expanded. ’Sugar Hiccup’ comes from both releases, while ’My Love Paramour’ is an album cut. Already Liz was forming her own language: recognisable words emerged and submerged in a maelstrom of her own, coated and drowned in Robin’s guitar. Her song titles did them justice: When Mama Was Moth, Glass Candle Grenades - She became another instrument, and more.
WEEK 2 ADDITION
At this point, Ivo got Robin and Liz to record Tim Buckley’s ’Song To The Siren’ for what became an extended (over three albums) Ivo-led studio project under the collective title This Mortal Coil. The Cocteaus only contributed to the first TMC album (It’ll End In Tears): they clearly had other plans. Asking bassist Simon Raymonde, formerly of The Drowning Craze, to join, was one, and as a trio again, recorded The Spangle Maker EP, which included the majestic ’Pearly-Dewdrops’ Drops’, the band’s first Top 30 hit (and still among fans’s favourite ever Cocteaus tracks). With Simon on board, the band developed bottom end, and deeper eddies and currents, but a lightness of touch too: they were evolving with each release. Liz, especially, was pushing herself further adrift from the shore.
Bolstered by all their success (number one albums and EPs in the independent charts, in the days when that really meant something), the Cocteaus played Royal Festival Hall. Back in the studio, 1984’s Treasure added more layers of ornateness, opaqueness, stateliness.This time, Liz’s songtitles were names: not just ’Lorelei’ and ’Pandora’ but ’Ivo’, ’Persophone’ and ’Aloysius’ too. Liz, in her naivety, didn’t account for the way people put those titles and the album cover (all lace and shadows) together, and came up with all that ’fey Victoriana’/mythology subtext that the trio hated. The music, however, continued its own resolute path, through three EPs in 1985: the first being Aikea-Guinea (which donates the title track).
However, at this point, the next two, Tiny Dynamine (which donates ’Pink Orange Red’), and Echoes In A Shallow Bay (likewise ’Pale Clouded White’: Liz had turned to names of butterflies now), were the start of an increasingly abstract, ’floating’ sound that ended up in Robin and Liz, minus Simon, recording the largely acoustic, un-percussive Victorialand (’Lazy Calm’ and ’The Thinner The Air’ were the album’s respective opener and closer). It might have been the result of founding their own studio in leafy South-West, enclave Twickenham, by the Thames, and christened September Sound, as both the latter EPs were recorded there. But then again, the subsequent single Love’s Easy Tears (all new tracks again) was a more traditional Cocteaus release - in fact, as the B-side ’Orange Appled’ illustrates, it was a forecast of the trio’s more commercial mindset that was later to blossom,. But the next release was another offshoot: The Moon & Melodies, a non-Cocteaus album but a collaboration between Robin, Liz and Simon with minimalist/ambient jazz pianist Harold Budd (instigated by a TV company who were planning a series about collaborations. The series got cancelled but the recording went ahead).
WEEK 3 ADDITION
1987 was a silent year: all that was visible was Robin producing The Gun Club. A year later, the Cocteaus re-emerged, warmer and lusher than ever, but more concentrated and concise too, with Blue Bell Knoll. A year later, they refined the step-forward with 1989's Heaven Or Las Vegas. From the former, the joyous 'Carolyn's Fingers' confirms that they'd found a way to bolt pop principals onto their uncanny undercarriage. Was it any coincidence that Robin and Liz had had a baby girl in the interim? Is the latter - marked by an increasingly audible release of tension and surge of unfettered love - the trio's collective favourite Cocteaus album? That it provides three tracks (a tender 'Fifty-Fifty Clown', a sweeping 'Iceblink Luck' and a regal 'Heaven Or Las Vegas') to 'Stars and Topsoil' suggests it might be.
The compilation closes with 'Watchlar', the B-side to 'Iceblink Luck', released in 1990. It's a tender, restrained finale, as restrained as usual Cocteaus album finals are barnstorming. It's also a perfect encapsulation of the band's growth since Garlands: from the jagged edges of early adulthood through the arrival and dispatching of inner demons to the calmer acceptance of middle age. By no means full circle, more an arrival.
Afterwards, Cocteau Twins were to leave 4AD. They'd been part of the family for years, helping define what the press used to call the 4AD 'sound', and it's almost always the way that family members must sometime leave the nest. There had been resentment on the band's part, when the Cocteaus first won widespread success (especially on radio), but under the guise of This Mortal Coil, with another person's song. Though Liz has since admitted that, with hindsight, the band had personally been unhappy during this time, and blamed the song and circumstances for it. But the die was cast, and they left, for Fontana, and two more albums (Four Calendar Café and Milk And Kisses) that were to close the Cocteaus catalogue. It had run its course: now this family was to go its own ways. Liz is currently recording a solo album, Robin has a new band, Violet Indiana, and Simon runs the Bella Union label, and produces too.
The Cocteau Twins' magical music box is now closed, but what wonders it contained when opened - bewitching songs and glittering soundscapes; music that could never have anything subsequent compared to it.
Martin Aston July 2000.