Cocteau Twins - Cherry-coloured Funk
If you don’t get lost inside Elizabeth Fraser’s voice, then you’re not listening right. Cue the track again; give it another go.
It’s the sort of voice that inspire adulation, fetish, worship, and (let’s face it) unhealthy levels of devotion. It’s the sort of voice that leads fans to be unable to understand why its owner can’t be giving its tender and vulnerable beauty to all of the people, all of the time. And it’s the sort of voice that lifts any musical accompaniment to remarkable and ethereal heights. This is peak dream pop, no doubt about it.
Slight confession: I’m not one of the Fraser crazies. My first Cocteau Twins album was Four Calendar Café in 1993, which most definitely puts me in the camp being frowned at by those who were there earlier and wiser. Like I care - Out of Time was my first REM album, and I didn’t buy anything by Pixies before Bossa Nova, but what can you do? No really, what can you do? Nothing, is what, whereas I can buy up the back catalogue and devour it all in one sitting, and when I’m done devouring I’m still hungry like the caterpillar, and when I’m fat on all the gorging, I’m at least fat and contented, and not grumbling about when exactly it was that my heroes’ decline started.
I’m getting away from the point somewhat here, assuming that is that I actually have one.
Of course I do. The point is this - Cocteau Twins: beautiful, ethereal, and above all, discoverable. Go! Discover them, and appreciate the beauty.