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So for the second issue of my "megazine" Dreck, which will come out in mid-March, I want to do an appreciation spread on the Twins, and here's the essay I wrote for it. If anyone else would like to contribute please message me. I've already gotten a couple other little pieces from others to include. Any feedback/comments are appreciated on my essay, as well. I love hearing how other people first discovered this band and what their music has meant in other peoples' lives.
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WHEN I DIE, TAKE ME TO VICTORIALAND
by anthony lockwood
When I was nineteen years old, sharing an apartment with a friend in downtown Portland, Oregon, I was browsing one day in a record store called Route 66 (long since gone) when I happened upon an album that caught my eye. It had very pretty, blurred cover artwork, and the song titles on the back looked like fragments of psychedelic poetry. It was Head Over Heels by the Cocteau Twins. So potent was that initial impression that I bought the album on the spot, sound unheard, curious to know what musical substance lay behind that ethereal façade.
I was not disappointed. By pure chance I had stumbled upon this group whose music is best when stumbled upon - by pure chance. Everything about them was of a piece. The Cocteau Twins – whoever they were – refused to give themselves away. There were no liner notes, no band photos, even the lyrics of the songs were as clouded and abstract as the album cover designed by 23 Envelope which had first ensnared me. The woman’s voice (or womens’ voices? “Robin Guthrie” could be male or female) was bewitching and here and there a recognizable phrase oozed out, like a clear circle rubbed in a frosty car window in winter; but even then it was the same abstract psychedelia that composed the song titles: “When mama was moth,” “Sugar Hiccup,” “Glass candle grenades,” “In our angelhood.” I yearned for a lyric sheet, some concrete anchor to facilitate my absorption of their arcane imagery, but there was none to be had. I was left to form my own idea of the meaning of this band’s songs – or, perhaps more accurately (particularly in the early years), their musical atmospheres.
Looking at the pull-out in the CD case I saw that the album had originally been released in 1983. It had come out when myself and everyone I knew were listening to Culture Club and Cyndi Lauper and Michael Jackson. Why had I never heard of this band before? And yet, despite my never having heard of them, here was a new copy of this album, and new copies of many other releases of theirs, twenty years later. Obviously, there were some well-kept secrets no one had let me in on.
I had stumbled upon an invisible phenomenon.
But that was only the beginning of this musical love affair. Shortly afterwards, returning to the same record store for further research, I picked up Heaven or Las Vegas, again because of its song titles, which possessed a dreamlike solidarity, but this time even more phrase-like and mysterious than with my first acquisition: from the first track “Cherry-coloured funk” to the magnificently-titled “Frou-frou foxes in midsummer fires.”
At the counter, a guy talking with the cashier noticed my selection and asked me if I’d heard HoLV before. I said no and he said, “Oh, it’s good. You should check out This Mortal Coil too, if you haven’t yet. They’re another great 4AD band you would like, if you dig the Twins.”
When I got the album home, at first only the flashy single “Iceblink Luck” stood out, gloriously voiced and unstoppably catchy as it was. But shortly after purchasing HoLV I got sick and spent about a week mostly just lounging around the apartment, not working, just smoking my way through a big bag of pot, reading and listening to music. In the course of those leisurely days I found myself listening to HoLV again and again, and as I did so the glittering single slowly receded and the rest of the album gradually rose to the surface, like what happens when you lay in bed staring up at the plaster pattern on the ceiling and suddenly your vision reverses and everything that looked like an indentation before turns into a protrusion, and vice versa. (Does anyone know what I’m talking about here?) I think maybe that was the moment I first stepped through the mirror and fully entered their world.
Soon after, hungry for more, I picked up a tape of Treasure, the 1984 follow-up to Head Over Heels, and one of their best-known and most critically-lauded releases (this is the album that had one starry-eyed British reviewer comparing the music of the Cocteau Twins to “the Voice of God”). By this time I was fully enchanted. “Lorelei” gave me mental images of angels ice-skating in slow-motion and making out beneath the Northern Lights. “Persephone” was a sorceress calling down a storm to avenge herself against her enemies or an errant lover. “Pandora” was like laying on a cloud with glowing feathers drifting down around changing colors as they fell, in a state of the purest and most ecstatic peace.
It was some of the loveliest, most ineffable music I’d ever heard. Without saying anything, they said more than anyone.
From there it was only a matter of time until I collected the entire oeuvre: the other LPs: the transcendent tranquility of Victorialand; the densely-layered lullabies of Blue Bell Knoll; and the flawless collection The Pink Opaque which brought together all the highlights of their prolific early years. Eventually I hunted down the harder-to-find (and pricey) treasures as well: The Moon and the Melodies (their collaboration with ambient pianist Harold Budd) and the maroon boxed set of their many singles and EPs. The boxed set was the perfect document of their evolution from the somewhat derivative and goth-sounding earliest EP Lullabies through the somewhat jagged experimentalism of Tiny Dynamine and Echoes in a Shallow Bay to the soothing splendor of Love’s Easy Tears and the Iceblink Luck single. Here was a band that tried something new every time while managing to always sound like themselves. Their music was a portal to another world, and for several years I preferred it to the real one.
I used to say all their stuff was magic up until the last two albums – Four-Calendar Café and Milk and Kisses, which were pretty but ephemeral. But one night in Olympia during my Evergreen College days a bunch of us had a party where we played Four-Calendar Café at neighbor-annoying volume from beginning to end and had group hug-ins and tripped out to the multiple aural orgasms of their music. I’ve had a whole new respect for Four-Calendar Café since that night. The song “Summerhead” must be one of their finest.
Every fan of the Twins has their opinions and favorites. For me there are a number of songs that stand out as gems of unreal quality, including “The Spangle-Maker” (the processed guitar feedback that sounds like the sounds made by whales deep in the ocean), “Five Ten Fiftyfold,” “The Itchy Glowbo Blow,” “Carolyn’s Fingers,” “I Wear Your Ring,” “Frou-frou Foxes in Midsummer Fires,” the entire first side of Treasure and the song “Amelia,” “Rococo,” “Sea, Swallow Me,” “The Ghost Has No Home,” “Sigh’s Smell of Farewellk,” and many others. Perhaps if I had to pick one song that I thought was absolute perfection though, it would have to be “Aikea-Guinea.” I read that aikea-guinea stands for “seashell” in some Scottish dialect, and that’s so perfect, because that’s exactly what the song is. With its simple, organic rhythm and the concentric spirals of its thrice-repeated chorus - which sounds to me like Liz simply singing the word “free” stretched out to countless syllables – this song is something organic and mind-blowingly beautiful, like a seashell. It ends so perfectly, at exactly the right moment, leaving you stunned and wondering how anything human could have made something so purely perfect.
The spell of the Cocteau Twins’ music never really broke, it just kind of faded in intensity, but it’s still there. Discovering their music was like falling in love for the first time, and that’s not something you ever forget.
________________________________________
WHEN I DIE, TAKE ME TO VICTORIALAND
by anthony lockwood
When I was nineteen years old, sharing an apartment with a friend in downtown Portland, Oregon, I was browsing one day in a record store called Route 66 (long since gone) when I happened upon an album that caught my eye. It had very pretty, blurred cover artwork, and the song titles on the back looked like fragments of psychedelic poetry. It was Head Over Heels by the Cocteau Twins. So potent was that initial impression that I bought the album on the spot, sound unheard, curious to know what musical substance lay behind that ethereal façade.
I was not disappointed. By pure chance I had stumbled upon this group whose music is best when stumbled upon - by pure chance. Everything about them was of a piece. The Cocteau Twins – whoever they were – refused to give themselves away. There were no liner notes, no band photos, even the lyrics of the songs were as clouded and abstract as the album cover designed by 23 Envelope which had first ensnared me. The woman’s voice (or womens’ voices? “Robin Guthrie” could be male or female) was bewitching and here and there a recognizable phrase oozed out, like a clear circle rubbed in a frosty car window in winter; but even then it was the same abstract psychedelia that composed the song titles: “When mama was moth,” “Sugar Hiccup,” “Glass candle grenades,” “In our angelhood.” I yearned for a lyric sheet, some concrete anchor to facilitate my absorption of their arcane imagery, but there was none to be had. I was left to form my own idea of the meaning of this band’s songs – or, perhaps more accurately (particularly in the early years), their musical atmospheres.
Looking at the pull-out in the CD case I saw that the album had originally been released in 1983. It had come out when myself and everyone I knew were listening to Culture Club and Cyndi Lauper and Michael Jackson. Why had I never heard of this band before? And yet, despite my never having heard of them, here was a new copy of this album, and new copies of many other releases of theirs, twenty years later. Obviously, there were some well-kept secrets no one had let me in on.
I had stumbled upon an invisible phenomenon.
But that was only the beginning of this musical love affair. Shortly afterwards, returning to the same record store for further research, I picked up Heaven or Las Vegas, again because of its song titles, which possessed a dreamlike solidarity, but this time even more phrase-like and mysterious than with my first acquisition: from the first track “Cherry-coloured funk” to the magnificently-titled “Frou-frou foxes in midsummer fires.”
At the counter, a guy talking with the cashier noticed my selection and asked me if I’d heard HoLV before. I said no and he said, “Oh, it’s good. You should check out This Mortal Coil too, if you haven’t yet. They’re another great 4AD band you would like, if you dig the Twins.”
When I got the album home, at first only the flashy single “Iceblink Luck” stood out, gloriously voiced and unstoppably catchy as it was. But shortly after purchasing HoLV I got sick and spent about a week mostly just lounging around the apartment, not working, just smoking my way through a big bag of pot, reading and listening to music. In the course of those leisurely days I found myself listening to HoLV again and again, and as I did so the glittering single slowly receded and the rest of the album gradually rose to the surface, like what happens when you lay in bed staring up at the plaster pattern on the ceiling and suddenly your vision reverses and everything that looked like an indentation before turns into a protrusion, and vice versa. (Does anyone know what I’m talking about here?) I think maybe that was the moment I first stepped through the mirror and fully entered their world.
Soon after, hungry for more, I picked up a tape of Treasure, the 1984 follow-up to Head Over Heels, and one of their best-known and most critically-lauded releases (this is the album that had one starry-eyed British reviewer comparing the music of the Cocteau Twins to “the Voice of God”). By this time I was fully enchanted. “Lorelei” gave me mental images of angels ice-skating in slow-motion and making out beneath the Northern Lights. “Persephone” was a sorceress calling down a storm to avenge herself against her enemies or an errant lover. “Pandora” was like laying on a cloud with glowing feathers drifting down around changing colors as they fell, in a state of the purest and most ecstatic peace.
It was some of the loveliest, most ineffable music I’d ever heard. Without saying anything, they said more than anyone.
From there it was only a matter of time until I collected the entire oeuvre: the other LPs: the transcendent tranquility of Victorialand; the densely-layered lullabies of Blue Bell Knoll; and the flawless collection The Pink Opaque which brought together all the highlights of their prolific early years. Eventually I hunted down the harder-to-find (and pricey) treasures as well: The Moon and the Melodies (their collaboration with ambient pianist Harold Budd) and the maroon boxed set of their many singles and EPs. The boxed set was the perfect document of their evolution from the somewhat derivative and goth-sounding earliest EP Lullabies through the somewhat jagged experimentalism of Tiny Dynamine and Echoes in a Shallow Bay to the soothing splendor of Love’s Easy Tears and the Iceblink Luck single. Here was a band that tried something new every time while managing to always sound like themselves. Their music was a portal to another world, and for several years I preferred it to the real one.
I used to say all their stuff was magic up until the last two albums – Four-Calendar Café and Milk and Kisses, which were pretty but ephemeral. But one night in Olympia during my Evergreen College days a bunch of us had a party where we played Four-Calendar Café at neighbor-annoying volume from beginning to end and had group hug-ins and tripped out to the multiple aural orgasms of their music. I’ve had a whole new respect for Four-Calendar Café since that night. The song “Summerhead” must be one of their finest.
Every fan of the Twins has their opinions and favorites. For me there are a number of songs that stand out as gems of unreal quality, including “The Spangle-Maker” (the processed guitar feedback that sounds like the sounds made by whales deep in the ocean), “Five Ten Fiftyfold,” “The Itchy Glowbo Blow,” “Carolyn’s Fingers,” “I Wear Your Ring,” “Frou-frou Foxes in Midsummer Fires,” the entire first side of Treasure and the song “Amelia,” “Rococo,” “Sea, Swallow Me,” “The Ghost Has No Home,” “Sigh’s Smell of Farewellk,” and many others. Perhaps if I had to pick one song that I thought was absolute perfection though, it would have to be “Aikea-Guinea.” I read that aikea-guinea stands for “seashell” in some Scottish dialect, and that’s so perfect, because that’s exactly what the song is. With its simple, organic rhythm and the concentric spirals of its thrice-repeated chorus - which sounds to me like Liz simply singing the word “free” stretched out to countless syllables – this song is something organic and mind-blowingly beautiful, like a seashell. It ends so perfectly, at exactly the right moment, leaving you stunned and wondering how anything human could have made something so purely perfect.
The spell of the Cocteau Twins’ music never really broke, it just kind of faded in intensity, but it’s still there. Discovering their music was like falling in love for the first time, and that’s not something you ever forget.
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