Cocteau Twins

Random and bite-sized facts on all things from the mythical and totally ethereal band that was the Cocteau Twins. Totally random but totally fascinating if you're into it. Do you know the Cocteau Twins now?

The Cocteau Twins briefly had two singers. Elizabeth Fraser's friend Carol joined the group for about two weeks, but the experiment didn't last. Carol was later immortalised inside Garlands, where Fraser included the dedication “Dear Carol, We shall both die in your rosary” on the inner sleeve.

The Cocteau Twins originally considered having a drummer, but John Murphy's request for travel expenses helped push Robin Guthrie towards using a drum machine instead. Guthrie later recalled that bringing a fourth person into the band's close-knit three-piece dynamic might have changed the whole chemistry.

The Cocteau Twins were frustrated with the production of Garlands. Guthrie said they had experimented with putting their drum machine through fuzz pedals and guitar amplifiers on their demos and in their live shows, but studio technicians wouldn't let them use the equipment that way. The finished drums therefore sounded much cleaner than the band wanted.

Blue Bell Knoll was the first Cocteau Twins album they made completely in their own studio. Guthrie and Simon Raymonde had built the studio themselves, and without a studio clock constantly pressuring them they spent weeks experimenting with guitars, pianos, effects and other equipment.

Robin Guthrie's apparently impossible guitar parts were often built one note at a time. He explained that the guitar heard on a Cocteau Twins recording could be spread across 12 separate tracks, with individual notes recorded and then combined to create chords. He admitted he couldn't play guitar conventionally well enough to reproduce the finished parts live.

“A Kissed Out Red Floatboat” was constructed in an unusual order. Simon Raymonde recalled that they first recorded a sequence, then Elizabeth Fraser sang over it with no music, and only afterwards did they add the instrumental parts. Raymonde said they had never made a song that way before.

Elizabeth Fraser really did use words and phrases that were difficult to decipher, but Simon Raymonde later rejected the idea that she simply sang nonsense for 17 years. He said much of Heaven or Las Vegas is understandable, while the earlier records made greater use of sounds, words and fragments rather than conventional lyrics.

The Cocteau Twins' unfinished final project is often described as a “lost album”, but Robin Guthrie later corrected that description. He said the recordings were not lost at all — they were still on his computer — and that only three or four tracks were substantially finished musically. Some of the material eventually appeared on solo and Violet Indiana releases.

The band deliberately avoided explaining exactly what Elizabeth Fraser was singing. Fraser later said she sometimes created “portmanteaus” by combining different components of words, while also using individual words simply because she liked their sound. The result was a vocal style in which the sound of language could matter as much as its literal meaning.

The Cocteau Twins' relationship with 4AD became increasingly strained towards the end of their time on the label. They remained grateful to founder Ivo Watts-Russell for signing them, but felt that the business relationship had deteriorated and that the label was no longer giving them the enthusiasm and attention it once had.

Robin Guthrie was particularly bitter about the band's financial situation. He later said that their contract with 4AD was “awful” and that they made very little money from their catalogue. Simon Raymonde similarly recalled resentment over what he considered an unfairly low royalty arrangement.

The irony was that Heaven or Las Vegas was the Cocteau Twins' most commercially successful album and remains one of Ivo Watts-Russell's favourite 4AD records. Yet only months after its release, the band and label had parted company.

The split came remarkably abruptly. Simon Raymonde recalled that almost immediately before the Cocteau Twins were due to leave for their biggest tour, Ivo told them they were free to leave 4AD. The band hadn't asked to leave and were still contracted for further albums.

Robin Guthrie later said the band had felt increasingly constricted by 4AD and believed they had outgrown one another. He felt the label had become less enthusiastic about each new Cocteau Twins record, while the band approached every album as though it were their first.

After leaving 4AD, the Cocteau Twins signed to Fontana/Mercury. Guthrie later called the move their biggest mistake, saying that the major label subjected them to pressures such as the album-tour-album-tour cycle and recording extra formats for singles.

Vaughan Oliver said the Cocteau Twins were one of the hardest bands he worked with. He described working with them as “trials and tribulations” and said they were “really f#####g hard work”. Their problem wasn't that they wanted conventional artwork — quite the opposite. They disliked specific subject matter and wanted their sleeves to remain abstract.

The Cocteau Twins deliberately avoided putting obvious explanations on their record sleeves. Robin Guthrie and Simon Raymonde later said their artwork was deliberately vague, with “no specific images”, because they didn't want to tell the listener exactly what the music meant. The mystery was part of the experience.

Vaughan Oliver said that Cocteau Twins sleeves had a particular quality of “ambiguity and mystery”. He liked the fact that listeners could look at an image and create their own interpretation. On several occasions, people told him what they thought one of his images represented — and Oliver would tell them that interpretation had never been intended. He considered that a success.

Oliver didn't design the Cocteau Twins sleeves by simply illustrating the lyrics. He said his aim was to create a visual gateway into the music without defining it. He would listen to the music and read the lyrics, but the finished image was supposed to suggest a mood rather than explain a particular song.

Some of the imagery used for Cocteau Twins sleeves wasn't created specifically for the records. The Spangle Maker, for example, used a photograph from the Edwardian era by American photographer Gertrude Käsebier. Oliver later said he considered it one of his strongest Cocteau Twins designs because the image captured something of the band's ethereal sound.

Oliver also described a wider 4AD technique of using pre-existing imagery. He said he would encounter photographs or other visual material and sometimes keep them in mind for years before finding the right record for them. The image didn't necessarily have to originate as artwork for a particular album — the important thing was finding an unexpected connection between image and music.

The Cocteau Twins' preference for abstraction fitted perfectly with Oliver's own philosophy of record sleeves. He disliked the idea of simply putting photographs of musicians on the front. Instead, he wanted the artwork to give the listener something to investigate and leave enough space for the imagination.

The visual relationship between the Cocteau Twins and 23 Envelope became part of the identity of 4AD itself. Oliver later recalled that the band were particularly abstract and didn't want “subject matter” imposed on their artwork. Their sleeves therefore became studies in atmosphere, texture and suggestion rather than conventional album illustration.

Before Cocteau Twins had a drummer, they actually had one briefly. John Murphy asked for travel expenses, which helped convince Robin Guthrie to use a drum machine instead. Guthrie later said adding a fourth person would have damaged the close-knit rapport of the original trio.

The Cocteau Twins' original demo was so primitive that Robin Guthrie and Elizabeth Fraser couldn't even make proper copies of it. Guthrie later recalled that they played the songs twice in his mother's living room before taking the two tapes to London.

They sent their two demo tapes to exactly the people they wanted to hear them: one went to 4AD's Ivo Watts-Russell and the other to John Peel. Guthrie later said they simply waited for the phone to ring, believing they were good enough that it inevitably would.

The first Cocteau Twins album, Garlands, was recorded in only nine days at Blackwing Studios and cost around £900. It remains the only Cocteau Twins LP for which the material had been written before they entered the studio.

Garlands sounds much cleaner than Robin Guthrie originally intended. He had been putting the drum machine through fuzz pedals and guitar amplifiers during live performances, but studio engineers told the inexperienced young band that the equipment was being driven into the red and stopped them doing it.

The photograph used on the Garlands sleeve wasn't originally taken for the Cocteau Twins at all. Nigel Grierson's photograph was an unused outtake from a photo session for Siouxsie and the Banshees' Scream.

Alan Rankine of The Associates produced the Cocteau Twins' 1983 single Peppermint Pig. Although the record was highly successful and narrowly missed the independent number one spot behind New Order's Blue Monday, Rankine became the first and last outside producer to work on a Cocteau Twins release.

Elizabeth Fraser later admitted that her famous vocal on This Mortal Coil's Song to the Siren was recorded before she felt properly prepared. She said she hadn't had enough time to rehearse and considered the vocals very shaky, yet the recording became the version for which the song is now particularly famous.

When Cocteau Twins were making Blue Bell Knoll, 4AD hoped Brian Eno might produce the album. The band actually met Eno, but decided they were better off producing the record themselves. Guthrie and Simon Raymonde subsequently built their own studio in a warehouse, constructing it themselves from floor to ceiling.

Robin Guthrie later said that making Blue Bell Knoll was important because he had finally realised he needed to learn production himself. Earlier Cocteau Twins records had left him frustrated because studio engineers treated the young band as musicians who shouldn't touch the mixing desk.

The Cocteau Twins' first single wasn't actually the single they intended to release. They recorded Speak No Evil and Perhaps Some Other Aeon, but after just over a week in the studio the planned single was shelved and the material that became Garlands was completed instead.

The Cocteau Twins' early success wasn't simply the result of 4AD's promotion. John Peel gave them radio sessions very early in their career, and Garlands reached the independent charts within two weeks of release before eventually reaching number two.

Robin Guthrie has said that the Cocteau Twins' music was written in a very unusual order: he and the bassist would create the music first, while Elizabeth Fraser subsequently developed the vocal line and lyrics. This basic working method was already established when they were making their earliest records.

Guthrie later described the Cocteau Twins' early recording experience as a lesson in not trusting conventional studio rules. One of his enduring frustrations with Garlands was that engineers had effectively cleaned up techniques which, to him, were part of what made the band's live sound distinctive.