I can't quite pinpoint when this music came into my life, but it must have been sometime in 1985 when I first became aware of Cocteau Twins, most likely their third full LP, Treasure (1984). For several years in the mid 1980s, Cocteau Twins were THEE go-to band for all your "come-down" needs. After a long night of freakin' & tweakin' on your favorite party favor, when your senses were getting fragile and you needed something soft and dreamy to drift back down to earth, there was really only one choice for that descent back into reality.
Cocteau Twins quickly became the flagship band for the 4AD label and helped to establish its aesthetic of luscious production values and elegant packaging. What the trio of Elizabeth Fraser, Robin Guthrie & Simon Raymonde brought together was the opposite of a "power trio". Softness and sweeping beauty were their hallmarks and no other band made me appreciate the potential of a good, spacey reverb like these folks.
Musically, backed by only restrained drum machine, Robin & Simon spun a web of shimmering guitars and soothing bass, a tapestry which seemed to fade off into infinity, gliding and glittering like angel wings. This aesthetic became hugely influential for me and many others as we all pounced on the wave of new digital reverb units which began flooding the music production gear market at the time. BIG echo and endless reverberation were a MUST for the burgeoning "dream pop" aficionados. But as vast and ethereal as this music was, there was a presence floating and flying atop it all which took something wonderful and alchemically transmuted it in to spun gold, the voice of Elizabeth Fraser.
Nothing was a better balm for a sensitive brain during a drug induced dawn than the voice of miss Fraser. Most of the time you didn't know what the fuck she was singing. It often just sounded like gibberish, but what magnificently beautiful gibberish it was! I didn't know at the time, but she, as it turned out, suffers from a great deal of social anxiety and this shyness became a key ingredient in creating her style on record. It was all turned inward, afraid to enunciate the words clearly. Instead, they became a phonetic code language, a symbolism of emotional triggers where the words faded from relevance and it was only the sound of that gorgeous, fragile voice leading you into that inner space of self reflection. It was a friendly, guiding hand as you came to terms with the world resolving back into itself while your head started to clear (and probably ache a bit).
Listening to this music, for me, brings back so many memories of facing a sunrise after a long strange trip and feeling like it's all going to be okay.
