Cocteau Twins

Many have had plenty to write about Cocteau Twins, either in short-form—music journalism that attempt to capture something approximating truth—or longer form books that take deeper dives into their 16-year career. This website attempted the first comprehensive band history in the mid-1990s. It has been online for 30 years now, and has been quoted occasionally in others’ work. We owe a debt of gratitude to others beyond Cocteau Twins themselves—journalists, authors, industry professionals, musicians, fans, and friends—whose stories and interviews with the former band members, friends, and associates have helped shape this work. The former members of Cocteau Twins have been on their own longer than the prolific sixteen years they were together as a band. They went from being scrappy teenage runaways from small-town Scotland to heavy rotation on the BBC’s coveted John Peel Show in mere months. Within… “Punk” as a musical form, is typically defined by its amateurism and unrefined character—DIY, anti-establishment, typically aggressive and filled with tension. It was messy and utterly democratic, and proved an efficient medium for venting rage and counter-cultural discontent.… At the outset of 1984, the intense pace of Cocteau Twins’ career showed no signs of letting up. A landmark came in January, when Robin and Liz played their first shows in the United States—and their last as a duo—with performances in New York and Philadelphia, generating coverage…

Robin Guthrie, Elizabeth Fraser and Simon Raymonde of Cocteau Twins in 1996. Photograph: Bob Berg/Getty Images Robin Guthrie, Elizabeth Fraser and Simon Raymonde of Cocteau Twins in 1996. Photograph: Bob Berg/Getty Images Dream-pop at its most divine: Cocteau Twins’ 20 greatest songs – ranked! At first, Cocteau Twins gave every impression of being a goth band: check out Wax and Wane’s Banshees-esque ambience – the guitar is very John McGeoch – flanged bass and drum machine. But the chorus soars out of the metaphorical cloud of dry ice, and Elizabeth Fraser’s voice is already outpacing her influences. One of several intriguing new directions explored towards their career’s end, the Twinlights EP offered the unlikely sound of Cocteau Twins more or less unplugged: set to piano, strings and a whisper of synth, Half-Gifts is entirely lovely. (If you prefer, there’s an equally beautiful, sonically lusher version on their eighth and final album Milk & Kisses.) In an oeuvre filled with breathtaking moments, the point where the chorus of Those Eyes, That Mouth kicks in – when the guitar suddenly blooms into a sheet of ringing sound and Elizabeth Fraser hits a succession of high, shivering notes – is among the most breathtaking of all. More direct – and emotionally troubled – than anything Cocteau Twins had previously recorded, major-label debut Four-Calendar Café was coolly received on release. But time has burnished its power: this album opener marries a languorous acoustic guitar to lyrics that unflinchingly describe being trapped in post-breakup grief. You could view the Cocteau Twins’ third album, Treasure, as a series of musical portraits – every track is titled after someone’s name. Fraser’s voice takes on a propulsive quality during the lovely Pandora (For Cindy), but the star here is the band’s most underrated asset: Simon Raymonde’s bass, delicately threaded through the track. A moment from breakthrough album Head Over Heels where the Cocteau Twins’ goth past still loomed large. Musette and Drums sets Fraser’s new, more abstract vocal style amid a dark cloud of distorted guitar; the effect is powerfully ominous and brooding, not adjectives much applied to their subsequent output. A perfectly judged collaboration with the US composer Harold Budd, The Moon and the Melodies is a dream of an album. Largely comprised of melancholy, reverb-heavy instrumentals, here Fraser adds a note of exhilaration as her voice soars above Budd’s treated piano and Guthrie’s multi-tracked guitar on opener Sea, Swallow Me. In a more sane world – and indeed one where the band bothered to release any singles at all from their fifth album Blue Bell Knoll – the drowsy, contented, sunlit sigh of Cico Buff might have been a hit. Still, the good will ultimately out: it’s currently enjoying viral ubiquity on TikTok. As with its predecessor, the Cocteau Twins’ final album Milk & Kisses got a decidedly mixed response: more than one critic suggested the band were treading water. But it has its moments, not least the dreamy, cyclical melody of Rilkean Heart on which Fraser examines her relationship with Jeff Buckley. Victorialand is Cocteau Twins’ most recumbent, ambient album. With Simon Raymonde absent, Fraser and Guthrie simply did without his bass and largely dispensed with rhythm tracks: there’s a solitary bass drum on Lazy Calm, but its sax-assisted sound appears to float and drift along, appropriately languid and impossibly gorgeous. The pick of the eight songs on the twinned EPs Tiny Dynamine/Echoes in a Shallow Bay, Pink Orange Red slowly builds from an intro featuring nearly a minute of a solitary echoing guitar, through a chorus that deploys Fraser’s “mouth music” vocals to stunning effect, to a blazing, swooning climax of guitar. Beneath the playful none-more-Cocteaus title lurks a serious song, written by Raymonde about his father’s death. A famed 60s songwriter and arranger, he gets a suitably epic send-off: the song surges and ebbs,