Cocteau Twins interview (LONG) part 1 of 2

[Chris Ridd <RiddCJ@computer-science.birmingham.ac.uk>]

COCTEAU TWINS
How much of a gamble is the Cocteau Twins' new album, 'Heaven or Las
Vegas', and can you really imagine these ethereal spirits playing
America's tackiest nightclub mecca?  After the spectral nursery rhymes
of their last album two years ago, they seem intent on making their
music more down to earth.

HEAVENLY BODIES
EXPLODING THE MYTH of the Cocteau Twins is dangerously easy.  Look for
meaning in their kaleidoscopic soundscapes and Liz's sensual Esperanto
offers the imagination an infinite range of profundities.  With their
music hovering just outside the realm of comprehension, the Cocteau
Twins are anything we want them to be therefore they can't help but be
sublime.

  Look for echoing images in the individuals, however, and Robin
Guthrie, Elizabeth Fraser and Simon Raymonde delight in making a
mockery of the pigeonhole where they existed as fragile, moody waifs
for almost a decade and which no number of press interviews
proclaiming their normality has completely managed to dismiss.

  "A lot of people expect us to have big wide capes on with black nail
polish and things," says Robin, a solid, bearded Scotsman more given
to ironic humour than introspection.  "Why should we be ethereal in
the first place?"

  "It's just this thing about descriptive words," agrees Simon, tall
and athletic-looking.  "I mean, you would never go and say, Hey we're
an ethereal band.  It's just the most ludicrous thing in the world.
The music we make and the people we are don't often seem to make
sense."

  Two years ago 'Blue Bell Knoll' scaled the subconscious and sealed
the Cocteau Twins' fate.  Like spectral nursery rhymes for the aurally
dyslexic, the melodies of 'Blue Bell Knoll' soared over opaque pools
of processed instruments, creating an entrancing flight of fancy.

  Now there is their new LP, 'Heaven Or Las Vegas', and the Cocteau
Twins have never sounded less like the soundtrack to someone else's
fantasy.

  Lyrically, 'Heaven Or Las Vegas' heralds a return to earlier albums
when Liz's blissed-out hedonism was less wilfully imagination-led and
still teased understanding, but these days there is a new confidence
and forthrightness in her characteristic yin and yang self-harmonising
vocals.

  With much of 'Heaven Or Las Vegas' recorded during Liz's pregnancy
and after the birth of her and Guthrie's first child last last year,
both admit parenthood has brought some personal changes.

  "It puts things in perspective," says Robin in thick Scottish tones
which years of living in London have yet to eradicate.

  Liz agrees: "Especially when you're pregnant.  I've probably got
settled back in my old ways a bit as well, but as soon as I got
pregnant, I don't know what happened, but I suddenly started to
realise what things mattered and what doesn't matter.  Suddenly I had
confidence which I'd never ever had in my life, which I consequently
lost after I had the baby, because it's such a frightening experience
you lose it again and you have to start over again.  But it does
change you."

  With a clarity that is just as compelling as the exotic layers of
sound on 'Blue Bell Knoll', 'Heaven Or Las Vegas' moves with
sepulchral purpose through the eccentric pop of 'Iceblink Luck' to the
emotional lustre of 'Road, River and Rail' which has all the poignant
beauty of an ancient love lament.

  Recorded in four months over a two-year period, 'Heaven Or Las
Vegas' may be the Cocteau Twins' most accessible album to date.

TAKING A BREAK from tour rehearsals in their Twickenham studios, the
Cocteau Twins are in high spirits.

  Simon's marriage later in the week, the presence of Robin and Liz's
child, Lucy, a diminutive ball of energy in a diaper and red slippers,
and a new monitor system delivered the night before, have banished any
trace of the apparent edginess caused by earlier difficulties in the
studio.  Unable to get a childminder for the day, Liz spends most of
the morning in the role of doting mother rather than band member while
the other two settle down to discuss the new album.

  "I think we've had it in the back of our mind that we wanted to play
live again, so we though we'd make some of the pieces more like songs
we could actually play live," Robin says of the album's sparser feel.
"We've never actually sat down and said let's make a record sound like
this.  In a way the closest we came was 'Victorialand'.  Me and Liz
decided we were just going to do some tracks with just acoustics and
voice as our limitations.

  "They were actually the same emotions with making this record as
they were five years ago.  It's just because you're a different person
five years on, your records are going to sound different.  You're
living different places from where you lived then.  You know different
people.  All these things go into making a record.  I think it still
sounds like the Cocteau Twins though.  But it's just the music is
growing up as you're growing up I suppose."

  "The only way you can judge it or we can judge it," Simon offers,
"is to say it's the best one that we've ever done."

  "We like it better than all our past records," Robin agrees.
"That's why we continue to make more, because if we made the perfect
record we'd sit back and say, We can't do any better than that.  We
think all our other ones are fucking crap.  I'm slightly proud of a
couple of tracks on a couple of them, but essentially I'm really
embarrassed about what we've done in the past..."

  "I like the last one," Simon interrupts.

  "Yeah," Robin amends.  "I think the last one's good.  I mean,
'Treasure' is just an abortion."

  "But it seems to be the one that people like the best and it's
probably sold the best," Simon shrugs.

  Relying more on the dynamics of the songs than past records have,
'Heaven Or Las Vegas' brims with the exquisite melodies which have
previously saved the band, once branded 'positive punks', from being
relegated to the ambient wasteland of New Age - an area the Cocteau
Twins detest.

  "It's quite annoying to be called New Age," Robin laments, looking
rather disturbed the term has come up at all, "Most of the people who
make New Age music are all about 50 and balding."

  "The music we make is different," Simon adds.  "That's obviously in
the context of the 'Victorialand' thing."

  "I find it degrading, you know?" says Robin, beginning to warm to
the subject.  "I mean, if you hear a record that is actually New Age
music..."

  "It's muzak," Simon finishes.

  "It's just a guy holding a synthesizer key down for ten minutes,"
Robin continues.  "And we get compared to that!  I think that is
really insulting.  But if a person listens to this music alongside an
ambient record and they get pleasure out of that then let them.  You
can't choose which bin your record goes into the record stores."

  "You can be certain though," says Simon, "that if you're in the New
Age section of a record shop you'd be alienating yourself from the
vast majority of the population, because a lot of people would just
walk straight past it."

  "I'd walk straight past it," Robin grimaces.

  "It's for all the 30 to 45s with CD in the car," offers Simon.

  "People who are too old to play their Jethro Tull records anymore,"
Robin decrees with a thinly disguised sneer.

  Robin and Simon are 28, Liz is 26.  Too young to swap 60s
compilation albums with their contempories but, with seven albums and
numerous EPs behind them, veterans of the independant music charts.

  "A lot of the bands coming up right now just seem to be getting
older," Liz comments, airing what is obviously one of her and Robin's
pet topics.

  "Liz was 16 when we made our first record and I was 19," Robin
explains.  "You see all the Young And Exciting New Bands coming out
and they're all like 30."

------

  Part 2 when our mailer can handle it!

   Chris

-- Chris Ridd, Computer Science, Birmingham Uni, UK -- RiddCJ@Cs.Bham.Ac.Uk --

"'It's going to look pretty good, then, isn't it,' said War testily, 'the One
Horseman and Three Pedestrians of the Apocralypse.'" - Sourcery