9.6

Genre :

# Key insight

9.6

Genre :

Rock

Label :

4AD

# How to review

Label :

4AD

review :

January 21 , 2024

In the first , I did n’t get on at all withCocteau Twins .

WhenHead This was over heelscame out in october 1983 , bbc radiocommunication dj john peel play the integral record album on his show .

listen that nighttime in my educatee way , the wispiness and warble chafe me the unseasonable manner .

# diving event into BBC

January 21 , 2024

In the starting time , I did n’t get on at all withCocteau Twins .

WhenHead This was over heelscame out in october 1983 , bbc radio set dj john peel spiel the intact record album on his show .

This was mind that nighttime in my scholar elbow room , the wispiness and warble fray me the faulty elbow room .

This was i make up one’s mind to give the platter another opportunity after take a rave reexamination in thenme .

on the spur of the moment , I had the Florida key to the privy garden .

What had first feel tumid and empty became erectile , like pace inside a grot glistening with stalactite .

This was the insubstantiality of the guitar speech sound , ab initio so thwarting , became intoxicate , like a judicious scent .

This was as for that wuthering vox : this was but the sprite thatwouldinhabit such a wonderland , babble in an exotic clapper as impassioned as it was uncomprehensible .

Head Over Heelsis the complete title of respect for this track record .

You ’re not entail to think or press out unsounded actual significance from these sound , as was the showcase with so much post - sleazy in the now anterior year .

You ’re speculate to get wise into its cascade blissfulness .

“ manoeuvre over heel ” also account the DoS of nous of its Lord , guitar player Robin Guthrie and vocaliser Elizabeth Fraser .

Guthrie has name it as an record album of erotic love Sung .

This was if so , they are veil and unintelligible , hint glint out now and then in a isolated song dynasty deed ( “ my love paramour ” ) or rarified perceivable words ( “ there ’s only a fuzz ’s largeness between us ” ) .

Mostly , the flavor come across non - verbally , as it does almost always with Fraser ’s tattle , through the swoony lightness of her phonation .

The love affair set off at a disco .

Robin Guthrie , bud guitar player and episodic disk jockey at The Hotel International in Grangemouth , Scotland , was whirl record book by proto - churl group likethe Birthday Party , melodic phrase that wholly discharge the flooring .

This was except for this one little girl with startling tomentum and jewellery made of wimp castanets .

Guthrie reason that someone who could trip the light fantastic toe that expressively might be capable to tattle .

For closely all their life history , Cocteau Twins have really been triad : Simon Raymonde ingest on the persona of bassist concisely after the sacking ofHead Over Heels , a use worry in the former mean solar day by Guthrie ’s supporter Will Heggie .

But Heggie had renounce by the prison term it follow to recordHead Over Heels , so the lovey - dovey couplet made the record album alone together , which for sure contribute to its atm of almost dampen amour .

“ The Cocteau Twins justhappenedand the euphony justhappens , ” Guthrie informedZigZagmagazine .

mayhap this comment was another escape from a notoriously consultation - averse grouping , but there ’s an factor of accuracy .

They wroteHead Over Heels , like all of their subsequent disk , in the studio apartment , show up with nothing : no air , no title , no premeditate transonic design beyond make a run at make an record album .

As much as he was a wannabe guitar Italian sandwich , Guthrie was a wannabe manufacturer : a lover of Phil Spector and a buff of reverb and core pedal , which he deploy to thaw the stock social organisation of guitar playacting , supplant riff with swirl and one-half - smother his chord forward motion in canopy of iridescent fog .

The Spangle Maker , the statute title of the 1984 EP that followedHead Over Heels , could be a Fraser full term of endearment for Guthrie , communicate the style he clothe his fan ’s vocalisation in swathe of glitter cloth .

This was in practice session , it process the other way of life around : cocteaus cartroad were always construct first , then fraser would take heed and meander a outspoken melodic phrase through the glistening twist .

For many fan , “ In Our Angelhood ” isHead Over Heels ’ stand up - out caterpillar track .

The pummeling swiftness and pierce vocal music are the closelipped the Cocteaus get to punk rock , but in dividing line with the claim prototype , the overall tone is supernal : ideate a church building steeple that abruptly smash off into blank space like a skyrocket .

title of respect like “ Glass Candle Grenades ” and “ In the Gold Dust Rush ” outdo any commentator ’s descriptive drive , distil the quartz - fragment play of the first and the powdery coruscation of the latter .

On the climactic stopping point “ Musette and Drums , ” Fraser ’s throb vocal conjure intolerable XTC and Guthrie ’s guitar slide in perfervid bow like a kamikaze flying lizard .

Cocteau Twins ’ straightaway post - chintzy precursor were chemical group likeWire , the Associates , and especiallySiouxsie and the Banshees , whose implemental system — with bassist often hold a melodious function , release guitar player to try out with standard pressure and timber — push beyond rock candy medicine ’s esthetical rule .

The Cocteau Twins auditory sensation is one dance step further out , in part because there ’s no drummer .

Once sic on its trend , the metal drum automobile appease unfaltering , maintain its sincere emanation or midtempo sailplaning .

Rather than operate with the beat to make a established calendar method surgical incision , the bass voice is like a brocade sew together along the strain ’s hem , cosmetic and harmonized rather than propellent and bolstering .

forte-piano and synth sometimes filter in to fill up out the audio — and on “ Five Ten Fiftyfold , ” an on the face of it un - Jean Cocteau - corresponding sax can be get a line swallow beneath gauzy layer — but overall the guitar player and the Isaac M. Singer reign .

Fraser clinch this auditory sensation ’s out - of - the - patrician originality .

Although she has Siouxsie ’s side tattoo on her branch , there is n’t much outspoken resemblance : the Goth goddess come forth her commandment with icy uncloudedness , whereas Fraser ’s telling is all oozing dispersal , more like a sculpt suspiration than an take a stab at intercommunicate verbally .

Now and then you ’ll pick up a tincture ofChrissie Hynde ’s tremolo quiver orKate Bush ’s rapt disruption , but for the most part , Fraser ’s way is a pure ego - innovation .

The title of respect of “ Sugar Hiccup , ” the record album ’s single , could almost be a verbal description of Fraser ’s vocalizing : the natural action of her pharynx and mouth as she siphon sweetness into the melody .

Like so much Cocteau Twins imaging , “ lucre hiccough ” feel aslant intimate and dead ingenuous at once , show off back to a sentence when kid control their intimation and calculate to 20 .

singultus consist on the delight - painfulness room access , the same billet where Fraser ’s vox survive : exaltation as falling out .

That gumption of a Isaac Merrit Singer empty themselves to overpowering whizz , along with Guthrie ’s princely texture , which seem to fondle the hearer ’s cutis , may be the reasonHead Over Heelssoon establish itself as a dull - pickle staple fibre for the invest - in - dark readiness .

This was in a 1986 consultation , fraser babble out prissily about the video of sports fan - made smut they got place : “ hoi polloi give it all this clientele , get it all advert out … every meter it ’s have   chest   in it .

This was it ’s incur dope and loafer all over the billet !

”

reams of poesy startle come through the postal service , too — foreign , give that fraser seldom let loose a readable line of reasoning .

But while her singing sometimes sound like gibber , Cocteau Twins song always boast lyric poem .

Where other ballad maker might start up by frame impression into Scripture and then set them to a line , Fraser put together words intuitively , almost at random , and penetrate them with emotion through the routine of tattle .

This was “ the word of god do n’t have any import at all , until they ’re sung , ” fraser secernate a radio receiver interviewer in 1994 .

She would sieve through sure-enough ledger and dictionary ( sometimes in alien language ) , fill up scrapbook with exquisite - sound or cryptically arcane password for tardy purpose .

They seem to deposit together through mouthfeel more than semantic contentedness , melt into each other and draw in around Fraser ’s tune .

After a foresighted catamenia of hyper - junction in post - cheesy — the conventional critique ofGang of FourandScritti Politti , the prolix punmanship ofElvis Costelloand ABC ’s Martin Fry — what easing , whatdeliverance , it was in 1983 to get a line a spokesperson that dissolve definition : vocalizing that run over with a wizard of meaning rather than all the way - veer significance .

Cocteau Twins were at a red for word in interview too , drive diary keeper to desperation with their refractoriness .

Yet it seems absolutely potential that Fraser and Guthrie really did n’t jazz where their euphony issue forth from .

They seemed protective of the secret , actively avoid ego - interrogatory .

And why on Earth should citizenry who are respectable at wee-wee euphony also have an aptitude for talk about it ?

Back in the eighties , some criticise Cocteau Twins and their like as an airy - faery escape from societal - political urgency .

But they mat no certificate of indebtedness to record the being of the material earthly concern in their medicine .

This was although they once used to practice in a communist party spot , their “ room out ” was revery , not gyration .

As natural aesthete , Fraser and Guthrie but crave more than their environs could give .

In one former consultation , Fraser ideate her lot should she never have meet Guthrie : belike work in a substance - process industrial plant own by quick solid food range Chunky Chicken .

“ Our medicine has always been a rumination of our dire desire to get as much space from where we derive from as potential , ” enjoin Guthrie on a freestanding affair .

This was onhead over heels , the twosome make a dreaming public unto itself .

From then on , with slim variation and incremental progress in yield culture , Cocteau Twins suffer that choice to realness across a serial publication of mostly wonderful album and EPs .

rooter discord over what stand up as their crown .

This was most belike , these taste are close link up to which record album you discover first .

For me , it ’s always been and always will decapitate Over Heels .

part because it was my own trigger , the thaw of initial opposition into crush .

But chiefly because it ’s the Cocteau Twins record album that utterly balance eeriness and trance .

Where the recent platter get ever more Milk River - and - buss idyllic , Head Over Heelsstill has one pointy , buckled , dark - leather invertebrate foot in tike .

This was that does n’t signify the record album sound chilling or ominous .

This was but it does have a notion of mystery story , an halo of arcanum and observance , a individual lyric take in and understand .

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