Cocteau Twins

Punk's embrace of inspired amateurism has been responsible for many musical surprises, but none so delightful as the Cocteau Twins. This Scots combo --Robin Guthrie, Elizabeth Fraser, and, eventually, Simon Raymonde --doesn't write songs so much as shape sounds into some semblance of a verse-chorus construction, after which Fraser appends her otherworldly melodies and inscrutable lyrics. It's not the most musicianly way of doing things, and the band's early efforts, Garlands and the EP Lullabies, flail more than they fly. But when the Cocteaus hit their mark, as they do on Garlands' "Wax and Wane," the result is deliriously tuneful, like a snippet from some fairy melody or a song heard in a dream.

That's the sort of magic the Cocteaus worked best; trouble is, it took them --that is, Fraser and Guthrie --a while to get good at it. Apart from the strident "Musette and Drums" and the rattletrap "When Mama Was Moth," Head Over Heels is too noisily primitive to cast much of a spell, while Peppermint Pig presents an unseemly brusqueness. Then, almost unexpectedly, comes the luscious, shimmering beauty of Sunburst and Snowblind, which includes a much-improved "Sugar Hiccup" (a coarser cousin can be found on Head Over Heels) and the gorgeous, moody "From the Flagstones." Raymonde joins up in time for Pearly-Dewdrops' Drops, which introduces the tasty title song. Treasure continues the Twins' ascent into aural bliss, thanks to such infectious concoctions as "Lorelei" or the hauntingly sibilant "Aloysius." Highlights from those records, along with the otherwise-unavailable "Millimillenary," may be found on the compilation The Pink Opaque.

With Aikea-Guinea, the degree of craft that went into the group's soundscapes began to increase while the melodic content declined. That doesn't exactly work against Aikea-Guinea, Tiny Dynamite, or Echoes in a Shallow Bay, as each eloquently conveys its own individual sense of atmosphere, but it does diminish the band's pop appeal. Victorialand, recorded without Raymonde, goes even further in its pursuit of the ineffable, as the aptly titled "Lazy Calm" and "Fluffy Tufts" make clear. Yet the duo could still summon its melodic gifts if so moved, as demonstrated by the slippery refrain to "Whales Tails," as well as the classic lines of "Love's Easy Tears" and the quirky choruses of "Orange Appled," both from the Love's Easy Tears EP. Even The Moon & the Melodies, a collaboration with minimalist composer Harold Budd, manages to deliver tuneful gems like "Sea, Swallow Me" and the slow, deliberate "She Will Destroy You."

Blue Bell Knoll inaugurated the group's association with Capitol Records in the U.S., and though the album can hardly be considered "commercial," it does boast an added sense of sparkle, from the giddy arabesques of Fraser's vocal on "Carolyn's Fingers" to the implied funk of "A Kissed Out Red Floatboat." Iceblink Luck enhances that sense of groove to near dance-single strength, offering a prelude of sorts to Heaven or Las Vegas, wherein the Cocteaus ground their soft-focus soundscapes with low-key, bass-driven rhythm tracks, a strategy that nicely enhances the music's appeal. Four Calendar Café continues in the same vein, although particularly with impassioned singing from Fraser and a more lustrous sense of studio polish. Otherness, released two years later, is a bit of a red herring, as the looped abstractions of "Feet Like Fins" seem to suggest a retreat into arty opacity. That was hardly the case, though, as the semi-acoustic Twinlights EP finds the Cocteaus sounding more conventional than ever, especially on "Half-Gifts," which owes more than a little to Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne." As such, Milk & Kisses makes an appropriate farewell, neatly balancing the textural detail of the group's early work with a sophisticated and accessible sense of melody.

Although the Cocteaus were able to approximate their studio sound onstage, the fact that it's only an approximation makes BBC Sessions an album for hard-core fans only. The boxed set Cocteau Twins is a collection of the group's EPs (at least, up until 1990, anyway), plus a bonus disc containing several non-LP and previously unreleased tracks. (J.D. CONSIDINE)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide