COCTEAU TWINS
Four-Calendar Café/ Milk &Kisses (reissues, 1993, 1996)
Goodbye 4AD, hello break-up angst, but the melodic majesty endures.
By Andrew Mueller
Cocteau Twins: (l–r) Simon Raymonde, Liz Fraser, Robin Guthrie
TOM COLLINS
UMR/PROPER
8/10, 7/10
TT was received at the time with bewilderment and foreboding akin to that which might be prompted by the ravens fleeing the Tower of London: Cocteau Twins leaving 4AD. It wasn’t just that the Cocteaus had, more than any other act, epitomised 4AD’s singular and influential aesthetic, it was that they appeared on the verge of an unlikely accession to genuine superstardom. 1990’s Heaven Or Las Vegas had been widely, and correctly, hailed as a classic. The accompanying US tour had filled ballrooms, theatres and –in a booking which seemed both hilariously incongruous yet weirdly apposite, given the album’s dazzle and shimmer and indeed title –the Aladdin Hotel in Vegas itself (wedding venue of Elvis and Priscilla Presley, among much else).
Behind the scenes, however, things were unravelling. The Cocteaus’ relationship with 4AD had become strained, as had the relationship between guitarist Robin Guthrie and singer Elizabeth Fraser. Unhelpful quantities of drugs were being consumed. The Cocteaus were dumped by 4AD in 1991, and Guthrie and Fraser split not long after. But the group somehow held together and signed to Fontana, for whom the Cocteaus made these two albums, now reissued –and/or welcomed home – in 140g vinyl by 4AD (in the US, at least; everywhere else we get them courtesy of Proper and UMR).