Day 74: Cocteau Twins - Head Over Heels

I have never heard a Cocteau Twins song that I didn’t like, but I also haven’t sat down to listen to many of their albums. It felt right today. After yesterday’s full-length record of garbage, I wanted to listen to something that actually sounds good. Also, they’re Scottish and I’m going to put more effort into listening to Scottish bands and artists. I didn’t even know Franz Ferdinand were Glaswegian, I need to step my game up.

Album cover courtesy of 4AD

Cocteau Twins were formed in the town of Grangemouth by Robin Guthrie and Will Heggie in 1979. The then 17-year-old Elizabeth Fraser joined as a singer two years later. Their debut LP Garlands was released a year later. On a tour supporting Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Hegge left the band, and Guthrie and Fraser returned to Scotland to work on their next full-length release, Head Over Heels.

Released in 1983, Head Over Heels was the duo’s opportunity to branch out and try a different sound. While Guthrie had previously been writing songs with Heggie, he now had to do it on his own. Guthrie also co-produced the record and cited the abominable Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound as an inspiration to the sound of the record. It’s an album that mostly consists of songs about love — at the time, Guthrie and Fraser were a couple and when they broke up, the band broke up, too.

As someone who had mainly heard the bigger songs, I associated Cocteau Twins with the angelic and otherworldly dream pop sound from Heaven or Las Vegas. As much as I like that, I was happy to hear that  Head Over Heels is a little bit different, more post punk-y goth rock. Some of the songs, like “in Our Angelhood” sound a bit like Siouxsie and the Banshees, while others like “Five Ten Fiftyfold” sound like spooky Twin Peaks stripper music that would be playing at One Eyed Jack’s. Fraser’s voice is still angelic, but there’s a darkness to the songs that I didn’t expect.

I love the fact that most of the lyrics aren’t really understandable words. The fact that there’s no words to it and everything is conveyed just by the sound and the vocalising leaves you to choose what the songs mean to you, and it makes you enjoy what’s expressed through the music more. It feels like something that could start seeming a bit gimmicky quite quickly, but it just doesn’t, it works so well.

Now that I’ve listened to this, whenever Cocteau Twins comes up in conversations I can honk something like “I like their earlier darkwave stuff” and push my glasses further up my nose while people think about how annoying I am – very nice, I’m always in the market for more irritating personality traits. I was originally going to give an 8.5 but I love the closing track “Musette and Drums” so much that I’m bumping it up. It’s a 9/10.

Also, fun fact that everyone probably always knows but that I just found out: Elizabeth Fraser provided vocals on a few songs on Massive Attack’s Mezzanine, one of them being “Teardrop” – how have I never stopped to think about who sings that?