release date: Sep. 1, 1982
format: digital
[album rate: 3 / 5] [2,90]
producer: Cocteau Twins, Ivo Watts-Russell
label: 4AD records - nationality: Scotland, UK
Track highlight: 1. "Blood Bitch" - 2. "Wax and Wane" - 7. "Garlands"
Studio album debut by the Scottish band Cocteau Twins on 4AD Records. Here, the band consists of guitarist Robin Guthrie, vocalist Elizabeth Fraser, and bassist Will Heggie, and without a real drummer in the band, Guthrie handed all drum programming.
The style is like many post-punk bands of the early 1980s an unidentified search within an experimental shape of sound with traces to art rock and proto-punk and the outcome is a dark meandering gothic rock-like and ethereal wave-style, which really is far from what later became the band's trademark of much more positive dream pop. The style is not fra from what you could end up with when thinking of a combo of The Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees. There's a certain similarity with the sound of Robert Smiths' swirling guitar-sound of the early '80s, and although, Fraser has a unique singing style, there are obvious bonds to the alto vocal of Siouxsie Sioux.
I don't think, I ever managed to play the album from start to finish back then, as I came across the album in the late '80s. I always ended up feeling the music had been caught in some time bubble or stylistic trench and the tracks kept repeating themselves without much progression, but there are qualities in the soundscape, which makes it an original blend. It's not an album of traditional harmonic melodies but more of experimental nature where the overall sensation matters more than the single tracks.
Not really recommended as a first encounter with the band.
Not really recommended as a first encounter with the band.
