![]() There was more than a hint of things to come, as Helen FitzGerald surely perceived in her generous 1982 piece on Garlands for Sounds magazine: “Where have these creatures sprung from, what dastardly corporate skulduggery can explain their unannounced and almost unprecedented leap to the forefront of our attention? Well, for once, bribery, corruption and deceit are blameless. Though they may have had some inkling-Robin and Will had played in other bands before forming Cocteau Twins, so they weren’t completely inexperienced-few others could have anticipated the rich vein of expression they would mine in the years following their debut, when they burst onto the British independent music scene fully formed, a kind of self-possessed singularity.įrom the start, their music defied description (but not comparison). ![]() Boredom, after all, can be a great motivator for doing things one might not otherwise consider. Like many groups formed in the early 1980s post-punk wave, their beginnings were humble: Elizabeth Fraser, Robin Guthrie, and Will Heggie-the original lineup-were young, shy, self-effacing, awkward, taciturn, frequently profane and circumspect working class teens who, like fellow Scots The Jesus and Mary Chain, to whom they would be occasionally compared, had little else to do but have a go at making music, despite, or perhaps because of, their lack of musical training. Even now, younger fans enquire regularly about “the next album” or “upcoming live shows.” Excerpt from Sounds magazine | 11 September, 1982 (The song “Pearly-Dewdrops’ Drops” played an important role in the novel and young adult film, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” as recently as 2012 in 2020 Heaven or Las Vegas was ranked among the most important albums of all time by more than one media outlet.) It is a testament to the timelessness of their sound and production quality that many new fans don’t even know that the story actually started in 1979, or that the trio formerly known as Cocteau Twins long ago moved on to new endeavours. So many years later, in a world exploding with musical creativity, output, and listening sources, the Cocteaus’ music brings its own kind of relevance-again, if that means anything anymore-as they are rediscovered by people yearning for something more seminal or transcendent. Somewhat more obliquely, they also became and continue to be a staple of goth, though they mostly eschewed goth’s trappings. Cocteau Twins were a foundational influence for entire categories of music, notably dream-pop and shoegaze-forms that have themselves found new 21st-century audiences. The few artists who have succeeded sound mostly unlike them, but have managed to convey an unmistakable essence: inspiration without imitation (think Beach House, Goldfrapp, Sigur Rós, or even M83). Many others have tried to reproduce or capture the Cocteau sound, with limited or mixed success. ![]() Liz and Robin on stage at Bradford Manhattan Club, 10-Jan 1982. They existed in a category by themselves-one they created. In most ways, their music remains unmoored from such things-as if they’d lived sealed off from the rest of the world all those years, sending out the occasional musical missive. Relevance, as far as Cocteau Twins’ music goes, is truly in the ear of the beholder: It’s what the listener makes of it, whatever the time or place. ![]() Questions of “relevance” seemed lost on them, as well. They never claimed to be waiting for “the muse” to inspire them, and disavowed any idea of a grand design, concept, or intention behind their music. The twist was they could barely pin it down themselves, much to the frustration of just about every journalist who tried to interview them. Within a few years they were among the most beloved post-punk indie bands in the UK, with a growing international following and a music press that couldn’t quite find the words, and really never did. They went from being scrappy teenage runaways from small-town Scotland to heavy rotation on the BBC’s coveted John Peel Show in mere months. The former members of Cocteau Twins have by now each been on their own for longer than the prolific sixteen years they were together as a band. Their unique sound, according to Elizabeth Fraser, ‘flowed from the chemistry between us.’” Introduction “They were simply-and remarkably-greater than the sum of their parts, the music a sort of alchemical byproduct of their working style and complicated, even dysfunctional relationships.
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