As promised, my portrait of Cocteau Twins singer Elizabeth Fraser done in pencil & chalk. I feel this could be better in someway and maybe if I had more confidence I’d use a black pen to darken the darkest areas, but I’ve just left it where it is. I’m guessing the photo I worked from is from around Blue Bell Knoll era (1988), but I’m not sure. Elizabeth looks too happy here for it to be later ‘cos of her and Robin’s (guitarist) relationship breakdown; she’s stated she didn’t enjoy recording the follow-up album Heaven or Las Vegas two years later for just that reason. Ironically enough, Heaven or Las Vegas was their most successful album. Oh, and it’s also my fave of theirs! 🙂
Well, it all really started here for me with a demo version of Pitch the Baby in 1990. I had heard a little of Garlands, their first album, back in the early 80’s, but I wasn’t fussed (I’ve always been a fan of real drums and the Cocteau’s use of drum machines was likely a big no-no for me – still is actually, but the Cocteau’s use of them definitely got better). Re-listening to Garlands all these later hasn’t changed my opinion of it though. Maybe one day!
Pitch the Baby just hit home off the bat and I can’t say why, so I won’t try, but Liz’s vocals were a big part of it. On the strength of that one song I bought Heaven or Las Vegas which will always remain as one of my fave albums and will always, as long as I live, encapsulate a tremendously happy time of my life. It always reminds me of Autumn and Christmas likely ‘cos it was released in the latter months of 1990 and I was steeped in its aural delights over that festive period. Funnily enough, I found out recently after reading bassist Simon Raymonde’s autobiography ‘In One Ear’ that the cover designer for the album took some photo’s of Xmas fairy lights which he swung around and used time-lapse on his camera to capture images that perfectly reflect the sonic soundscapes within. If by some alchemical process you could distill the music into an image, that would be it. I guess the stars aligned.
The next album I bought not long after by them was Head Over Heels which is up there with Heaven or Las Vegas as their best and, like that album, reminds me of Christmas, snow and, I think, the first time I ever saw a fox one still, cold Winter’s morning. Magical.
The Cocteau’s follow-up album, Four-Calendar Cafe, didn’t overly grab me at the time of its release in 1993, and I ended up selling it (along with their earlier albums Blue Bell Knoll and Treasure) when I had a much needed clear-out of my music collection, and I never even bothered with their last and final album Milk & Kisses in 1996. It was only around late 2022 that I decided to give those albums that had passed me by another listen. I mean, I loved Head Over Heels and Heaven or Las Vegas so much I thought there must be more to their other music than I’d heard first time around. And guess what!? I was right! (It happens occasionally).
First off, I bought Victorialand, which I quickly came to love and is one of those albums that I choose sometimes to sing me to sleep, such is its dream-like nature and has a softer sound than their other releases, Little Spacey and The Thinner the Air being particular faves. So then I picked up (after a number of failed bids on eBay) Treasure Hiding – The Fontana Years (not to be confused with song Treasure Hiding from Milk & Kisses)which is pretty much everything they did post Heaven or Las Vegas after their sad split from iconic label 4AD, and I adored it. Treasure Hiding was such an apt name because it was like I’d buried all these gems years ago and then dug them up all these years later. I thought to myself ‘what have I been missing all these years?’ but I really couldn’t imagine these songs being a part of my life at any other time, such was their effect and, just Heaven or Las Vegas and Head Over Heels reflect a part of my life all those years ago, so too will Treasure Hiding be a part of the fabric of more recent years and the feelings they evoke which still run very strong today.
Anyway, without further ado, and as promised, my fave Cocteau Twins songs in no particular order:
Fifty-Fifty Clown – Robert Elms Session
It has to be this version. Much as I love the album version, Fifty-Fifty Clown wasn’t particularly up there with my favourites until I heard this session version on Treasure Hiding. Elizabeth’s vocals, particularly in the latter part of the song, are subdued in the production on the album, but this session recording is just sublime, especially that latter part that kicks in about 1min 57secs in where Elizabeth’s voice is heard so much more clearly in all its remarkable beauty. I also love the real drums! Atm (sorry to be morbid), but it’s one of my three funeral songs (U2’s Drowning Man and Enya’s ’S fagaim mo bhaile making up the other two).
But then this could be in my three funeral songs! 😀 It was only many years after I bought Head Over Heels, which I loved when I bought it back in about 1991, that this song really hit home in a much deeper way. Again, it simply managed to encapsulate a moment in time that will be forever beautiful but forever lost except in memory. A song that goes straight to my heart. I find it remarkable that Robin and Elizabeth must’ve have only been about 19 when they wrote it, the Cocteau Twins being just a duo at that time.
A song that completely flew under my radar until I bought Treasure Hiding – The Fontana Years. Released in 1996 as part of the two releases of Violaine in October of that year, Alice, to my mind, is Elizabeth’s finest vocal performance. Hauntingly beautiful, Alice was originally used in the year of its release in a film called ‘Stealing Beauty’ and then some years later in ‘The Lovely Bones’ in 2009. (I don’t much like its association with the latter film, not because it’s bad, but the subject matter of a young girl being murdered is pretty damn dark). Anyway, Alice turned out to be the Cocteau’s last song on their last official release before they split, so what a way to go out, but it absolutely 100% deserved its own single. They missed a trick!
As I said at the start of this post, this is where it all began for me. It still has that otherworldly power it had in 1990 when I first heard ‘The Red Tape’ that was a freebie with Select Magazine in October of that year (I still have that tape). And I still have that memory of a 20 year old me sitting on the edge of my bed next to my beloved stereo sticking in this cassette that I really didn’t honestly believe would deliver anything new to my mature and exalted ears 😀 So glad to be proved wrong!
I’ve linked here to a live version which is quite a bit different than the demo and studio one. Even more otherworldly, but still damn fine!
Last track on Four-Calendar Cafe, an album I bought at the time but didn’t survive the cull when I had to downsize my CD’s. With hindsight (and as I’ve mentioned above), I’m glad it never hit home then as it’s such a part of my recent life, Pur being of particular poignancy for reasons I won’t go into, but boy do I love this song. No idea what it’s about, but that’s pretty much the case with all the Cocteau’s songs 😀
This has become possibly my fave Cocteau’s song, but it has to be the album version from Milk & Kisses. I bought the Twinlights EP back in 1995 which had an acoustic version that was good, but I never bought Milk & Kisses so never heard this other version of it. It was with a little sense of reluctance I properly gave their last album a listen (the reviews weren’t great to add to my initial thoughts of the tracks I had heard from that time) and I’ll admit to be being a tad horrified by Half-Gifts at first. I’ve come to think of it as their ‘wonky song’ because of the off-pitch, warped sound of the keyboards. What on earth were they thinking!? But, of course, I grew to absolutely adore it. I remember that Christmas of 2022 having Treasure Hiding on in the background while doing something I hadn’t done in many-a-year but for some reason fancied doing over the holidays and that was a puzzle, specifically one using one of Angela Harding’s magical prints called (aptly) Winter Wonderland. Winter Wonderland, btw, that old classic Christmas song, was covered by the Cocteau’s and appears (along with Frosty the Snowman!) on Treasure Hiding.
Half-Gifts, for some reason I can’t explain (much like Pur), became entangled with something personal that I won’t go into here, but it’s funny how songs can do that. It ain’t the lyrics ‘cos I can’t understand most of them, but that’s pretty much the case with Cocteau Twins songs as Elizabeth has said she had no confidence in writing lyrics so used foreign words or just sounds that she liked. I’m not sure it’s quite ideoglossary (a name given when someone invites their own imagined words and language), but it isn’t far off. Which reminds me, Elizabeth sang (possibly in Elvish?), the Lament for Gandalf in The Fellowship of the Ring movie. So now you know! 🙂
Bubbling Under…
Nope, that’s not a Cocteau Twins song, just some others that didn’t quite make the top tier but very much worthy of mention, and they are:
There’s more I could mention, but I’m sure I’ve bored you to death by now anyway!
In finishing, I guess we’ll never see the Cocteau’s again. Elizabeth has said that she never wants to share a stage with Robin ever again, though I presume that was when things were raw between them (though I believe they accepted an award together not so many years ago). I think as well that Elizabeth’s anxiety at performing maybe plays a part. I’m sure there’d be a little media circus which I can imagine none of the band are fans of, Elizabeth least of all. Who knows? I can’t help wonder though if their daughter, Lucy Belle, would love to see her parents together on stage once more to play those songs that were written and played and that formed the backdrop for her conception and formative years. I was lucky enough to see them once at Liverpool’s Royal Court on the Heaven or Las Vegas tour, but I’d love to see them again now I know their output so much better. One can dream.
I’m outta here,
Jimbob 🙂
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