Post by Lauren Curtis on Dec 15, 2006 19:32:08 GMT -5
Robin Guthrie (guitar) and Will Heggie (bass), both from Grangemouth, Scotland, formed the band in 1980. At a local disco, Nash, they met Elizabeth Fraser, who eventually provided vocals.
The band's influences at the time included Joy Division, The Birthday Party, Sex Pistols and Siouxsie & The Banshees. The name Cocteau Twins itself comes from an early (unreleased) song by fellow Scotsmen Simple Minds. Their debut recording, Garlands (released by 4AD Records in 1982), was an instant success, as was the subsequent Lullabies EP.
Although the entire band was praised for their performances, Fraser received the most attention. Even on their early recordings, her singing was startlingly unique, and with little precedent. At times barely decipherable, Fraser seemed to veer into glossolalia and mouth music. All Music Guide reviewer Ned Raggett writes that "part of her appeal is how she can make hard-to-interpret lyrics so emotionally gripping."[1]
[edit] Mid-80s
Will Heggie left the group after the tour that followed the 1983 release of the band's second EP, Peppermint Pig (and subsequently joined Lowlife). The band's sound on its first three recordings relied entirely on Heggie's rhythmic basslines, Guthrie's minimalistic guitar, and Fraser's voice; Cocteau Twins' next full-length LP, Head over Heels, had to rely solely on the latter two. This led to the growth of Cocteau Twins' characteristic sound: Fraser's voice, by turns ethereal and earthy, combined with Guthrie's heavily effected guitars. (Guthrie has often said that he is far more interested in the way the guitar is recorded, than in the actual notes being played, though he later admitted the effects and layering were due to his own technical inabilities.) Like its very dissimilar predecessor, Head over Heels was well-received by the public and press.
In 1983, the band participated in 4AD's This Mortal Coil project (this spawned a cover-version of Tim Buckley's Song to the Siren performed by Guthrie and Fraser), and during their work for that, they got to know Simon Raymonde (formerly a member of Drowning Craze), who joined the group later that year as bass player.
With Raymonde, the band released a series of critically acclaimed albums and EPs that explored their new style. These included The Spangle Maker (1984), Treasure (1984), Aikea-Guinea (1985), Tiny Dynamine and Echoes in a Shallow Bay (1985), and Love's Easy Tears (1986). Raymonde, who was called in to work on the second album by This Mortal Coil, did not participate in the recording of the fourth Cocteau Twins LP, Victorialand (1986), a predominantly acoustic record which featured only Guthrie and Fraser. Raymonde returned to the group for The Moon and the Melodies (1986), a collaboration with ambient composer Harold Budd, which was not released under the Cocteau Twins name.
In 1985, 4AD signed an agreement with Relativity Records for distribution of Cocteau Twins' releases in the US and other territories. To commemorate the event, the compilation The Pink Opaque (1985) was released as a way of introducing the new, broader audience to the band's back-catalog.
While remaining a 4AD band internationally, Cocteau Twins finally signed a major-label contract with Capitol Records in 1988 for distribution in the US, and released their fifth proper LP, Blue Bell Knoll, in October of that year.
[edit] Early 90s
The style the group had begun exploring with Head over Heels reached its peak on Heaven or Las Vegas, released in late 1990. The most commercially successful of their many recordings, the album rose to the higher reaches of the UK charts immediately after its release. However, despite the success of the record and the subsequent concert tours, not everything was well with the band. They parted ways with 4AD following Heaven or Las Vegas partly because of conflicts with the label's founder Ivo Watts-Russell, and were close to breaking up over internal problems due in large part to Guthrie's addiction to drugs, including alcohol.
While on their international tour supporting Heaven or Las Vegas, the group signed a new recording contract with Mercury Records subsidiary Fontana for the UK and elsewhere, while retaining their US relationship with Capitol. In 1991, 4AD and Capitol released a Box Set that compiled the band's EPs from 1982 to 1990, and also included a bonus disc of rare or previously unreleased material.
The band's seventh LP, Four-Calendar Café, was released in late 1993. It was a departure from the heavily-processed, complex and layered sounds of Blue Bell Knoll and Heaven or Las Vegas, featuring clearer and more minimalistic arrangements. This, along with the record's unusually comprehensible lyrics, led to mixed reviews for the album: Some critics accused the group of selling out and producing an 'accessible album,' while others praised the new direction as a felicitous development worthy of comparison with Heaven or Las Vegas. The band themselves explained that Four-Calendar Café was simply a response to the turmoil that had engulfed them in the intervening years, with Guthrie entering rehab and quitting alcohol and drugs, and Fraser undergoing psychotherapy. The two had been in a long-term relationship, and by this time had a young daughter, Lucy-Belle, born in 1989.
[edit] Mid-90s and the breakup
1995 saw the release of two new EPs: Twinlights and Otherness. The former consisted of four gentle acoustic songs, recorded with only piano, acoustic guitar and voice; Otherness, by contrast, was a collaboration with Seefeel's Mark Clifford, and featured four electronic remixes of both older and then-unreleased Cocteau Twins songs. Both EPs were labelled 'experimental' by the press, since they were very different from the EPs the band had released in the past.
As it turned out, some of the tracks on both Twinlights and Otherness were versions of songs from the band's eighth album, Milk and Kisses (1996). The record was hailed as a "return to form" by some as it saw the return of more heavily layered guitars, and Fraser began once again to obscure her lyrics, though not entirely. Nevertheless, reviews were, for the most part, somewhat mixed. Two singles were taken from the album: Tishbite and Violaine; both exist in two CD versions, with different b-sides included on each. The band, augmented by an extra guitarist and a drummer, toured extensively to support the album - their last for Mercury/Fontana - and in live performances seemed to have found a cohesive freshness and power that had been lacking during their previous outing in 1993/94. A new song, "Touch Upon Touch", which debuted during the live shows and was recorded later in 1996, became the last Cocteau Twins song ever released.
In 1997, while recording what was to have been their ninth LP, the trio suddenly disbanded over irreconcilable differences in part related to the break-up of Guthrie and Fraser. While a number of songs were partially recorded and possibly completed, the band has stated that they will likely never be finished or released in any form.
Fans of the group were not however, left entirely empty-handed. In 1999, Bella Union, the record label founded by Guthrie and Raymonde, released a double-CD Cocteau Twins compilation entitled BBC Sessions. The collection is a complete record of the band's appearances on UK radio programs from 1983 to 1996, with rare and unreleased material included. In 2000, 4AD released Stars and Topsoil, a compilation of selected songs hand-picked by the band members that had been released during their years with 4AD; all recordings had been digitally remastered by Robin Guthrie. Finally, in 2003, 4AD followed Stars and Topsoil with the release of digitally remastered versions of the first six Cocteau Twins LPs.