The best albums by Cocteau Twins
Prince fought tooth and nail to sign them to his Paisley Park Records label. Robert Smith stated he listened to their records while preparing for his wedding. David Lynch sought them to appear in 1986’s Blue Velvet, and their work has been sampled by the cutting-edge electronic underground of Arca to the commercial pop heights of The Weeknd. From Napalm Death to Sigur Rós, every corner of popular music’s vast terrain professes to have been uniquely touched by cult British trio Cocteau Twins.
Formed during post-punk’s 1979 peak, guitarist Robin Guthrie and the eventually settled line-up of Simon Raymonde and Soprano vocalist Elizabeth Fraser would pursue a uniquely stirring, ethereal sound of textured indie-pop and effects-laden dreamscapes, anticipating the nascent shoegaze that would float into the charts several years later. Dwelling in the same arcane caverns as This Mortal Coil and Dead Can Dance, Cocteau Twins would lift the British 4AD label that signed them in 1982 to a prominent stature in the alternative music world, more than any other labelmates before them.
The trio would carve their own creative path across the 1980s with a steadfast creative vision, dropping a string of albums and EPs that swiftly caught the attention of some of the biggest names of the day. Signing to the majors didn’t dent their allure, entering the following decade with fan-favourite efforts before finally calling it quits in 1997. Teasing the music world with an initial announcement of playing 2005’s Coachella Festival, its cancellation cemented their permanence as one of the UK’s most celebrated and elusive bands.
“The aim was to make music with punk’s energy but more finesse and beauty, and that shiny, Phil Spector sound,” Guthrie revealed to Billboard in 1993. “I was trying to make my guitar sound like I could play it, so I was influenced by guitarists who made beautiful noise, like The Pop Group or Rowland S Howard.” “Beautiful noise” just about aptly sums up the enchanting aural ether the Cocteau Twins opened a door to across their 15-year recording history, and left open to explore now long after their disbandment. For the curious yet uninitiated, we’ve selected five albums that provide different entrances into their captivating oeuvre.
Far Out‘s list of the best albums by Cocteau Twins
Cocteau Twins’ definitive album: ‘Heaven or Las Vegas’
Release Date: September 1990 | Producer: Cocteau Twins | Label: 4AD
Dropped during shoegaze’s peak, Heaven or Las Vegas enters a bolder and brighter pop direction while still deftly harnessing the otherworldly aura that floats across their discography with signature shimmer. Fraser’s vocals are less obscured and strive for a more direct emotional affect, with pleasing washes of synths and electronics pulling their beguiling netherworld to a contemporary fringe. Guthrie’s riffs veer between their standard nebula yet are packed with flavoursome textures that ripple and shift like a chameleon for each of the album’s ten cuts.
Mirroring the cover’s warm flush, Heaven or Las Vegas sees Cocteau Twins possess less of their supposed gothic shades and conjures a radiant, enveloping sound that’s inviting and passionate. A creative peak they’d arguably never reach again, this record presents them as their most cohesive and accessible without compromising their dream pop magic.
Defining track: ‘Cherry-Coloured Funk’
Cocteau Twins’ most convenient album: ‘The Pink Opaque’
Release Date: January 1986 | Producer: Cocteau Twins and Ivo Watts-Russell | Label: 4AD and Relativity
Strictly a compilation, 4AD went to the trouble of gathering key tracks and curios across the band’s three albums and various EPs up to 1985. Collated as an introductory LP for the American market via the Relativity distributor, the sampler nature of The Pink Opaque stands as an indirect and perfect taster for newcomers, while also boasting a treasure chest of rarities for the more dedicated fans.
Naturally, there’s little filler to be found here. The Pink Opaque’s entrée is an essential curation of their creative development, channelling darkwave shrouds still tethered to post-punk’s brittle affrontery, yet hinting at the radiant gems to come. The LP’s also notable for featuring the first cut recorded with Raymonde on bass, ‘Millimillenary’, formerly only available on NME‘s Department of Enjoyment cassette in 1984.
Defining track: ‘Musette and Drums’
Cocteau Twins’ most post-punk album: ‘Garlands’
Release Date: July 1982 | Producer: Cocteau Twins and Ivo Watts-Russell | Label: 4AD
There’s an infinitely icier bite to Cocteau Twins’ debut, Garlands, than the trio would ever revisit. Drama, passion, and intensity would follow to greater depths, but the engulfing indie plan traversed by the band is fraught with stinging drum machines, Guthrie’s spidery guitar crawls, and Fraser, at times, bellowing her alien vocals with snarled aggression. Far removed from the ethereal washes that would come to define their work, album opener ‘Blood Bitch’ makes clear the latent belligerence that lurks underneath the record’s aural fog.
While skipped over by fans enraptured with their later radiant glazes, Garlands sits alongside the likes of Bauhaus or early The Sisters of Mercy as an unearthed soundtrack to the day’s economic depressions and urban malaise. While future cuts inhabited other realms, this record feels most planted in reality, coloured by their Grangemouth hometown port city’s faded, deindustrialised haunt.
Defining track: ‘Shallow Then Halo’
Cocteau Twins’ most rewarding album: ‘Victorialand’
Release Date: April 1986 | Producer: Cocteau Twins | Label: 4AD
During Raymonde’s brief departure to lend his bass to This Mortal Coil, Guthrie and Fraser decided to cut their fourth album in his absence. They did away with overt bass and drums for a record that floats in a glacial and isolated space that wavers on ambient. Titled after a region of eastern Antarctica, Victorialand sees Cocteau Twins at their most elemental and pure.
Lacking the dramatic immediacy that the expanded instrumentation would usually contribute, the elongated stretches of pealing guitar and rippling chimes can present as a chore for the impatient. However, only a fool would shirk Victorialand, which sees the pair painting an impressionistic Rorschach test inspired by nature and gifted with greater clarity as each track arrives like a lapping tide. At its centre is Fraser’s exquisite vocals, soaring on a celestial height and arguably the finest delivery of her career.
Defining track: ‘Throughout the Dark Months of April and May’
Cocteau Twins’ most pivotal album: ‘Treasure’
Release Date: November 1984 | Producer: Cocteau Twins | Label: 4AD
While Heaven or Las Vegas stands as Cocteau Twins’ defining album, 1984’s Treasure is their most transformative, establishing the sonic character that most people default to when thinking of the trio during their pomp. Gone are the frigid arrangements and icicle drum machines. A further mine into a proto-shoegaze tundra keeps their fully realised ethereal sound on a strange and ruminative terrain. Ironically, it’s this record which feels their most gothic but in the truest sense of the word, spellbound with heady, transportive energy yet never limping into new age sog.
Having begun to crack their sound on Head over Heels, Cocteau Twins capture richer, alien intrigue on Treasure. A nocturnal blizzard of dream pop wanders that sweeps across its ten tracks with new dimensions and aural quirks, digital drum crashes and percolating percussion. All of this helps score a gem of a record that captures them unearthing confidence in their vision with a record that still sounds as immersive and alluring as it did over 40 years ago.
Defining track: ‘Lorelei’
