release date: Apr. 14, 1986
format: cd
[album rate: 3 / 5] [2,98]
producer: Cocteau Twins
label: 4AD Records - nationality: Scotland, UK
Track highlights: 1. "Lazy Calm" - 2. "Fluffy Tufts" - 8. "How to Bring a Blush to the Snow"
4th studio album by Cocteau Twins, who continues to release on the independent label 4AD. Again, the album is produced by the band, which once again is temporarily reduced to consist of only Elizabeth Fraser and Robin Guthrie, as bassist Simon Raymonde was occupied in making the second album by This Mortail Coil, and instead Fraser and Guthrie have focused on a different take on their music - perhaps by regrading to former virtues, thus making their clearly most ethereal wave-styled album, which comes quite close to being primarily an 'ambient' release. It's really hard to tell if it's an improvement to Fraser and Guthrie's constant dwelling on a certain dream pop soundscape that tends to be repetitious but it also has a distinct quality, which makes me think of The Durutti Column / Vini Reilly - that being of course Guthrie's guitar sound, and with the exception that Reilly generally leaves more room for diverse compositions on his albums.
Victorialand doesn't contain clear single hits but has more of a conceptual feel, or something that points to the later style of post-rock. This is the band's most poignant ambient release, which may have had an influence on and indirectly led to the album The Moon and the Melodies (Nov. '86) as a collaboration with American jazz minimalist and neo-classical composer Harold Budd and the band members individually and not as Cocteau Twins, thus credited Harold Budd, Simon Raymonde, Robin Guthrie, Elizabeth Fraser.
Anyway, Victorialand is imho not where you should start when looking up the Cocteau Twins.
Anyway, Victorialand is imho not where you should start when looking up the Cocteau Twins.
