Helpfully sub-titled ‘Singles and Extended Plays 1982 – 1996’, “Lullabies To Violaine” is a typically lavishly-packaged and extensive two volume set culling together everything Grangemouth's influential COCTEAU TWINS recorded in single and EP form during the 15 years they spent building sonic cathedrals and writing the celestial indie hymns that would reverberate inside them.
Historically the more intriguing, “…Volume 1” charts the band’s course from their early days of cheap drum machines, tight studio budgets and something akin to the moodier end of early ‘80s independent rock through to their all-out gerrymandering of all things ethereal by the second half of the decade and remains a fascinating ride.
The early EPS feature the original CT trio of Elizabeth Frazer, Robin Guthrie and bassist Will Heggie, who would later go on to found the under-rated Mammoth Records label. Their early offerings like “Feathers And Oar-Blades” and “Peppermint Pig” reek distinctly of the soon-to-be-familiar Eau De Goth while there’s a distinctly edgy Keith Levene/ Will Sergeant tinge to Guthrie’s abrasive guitar. By the time of the “Sunburst And Snowblind” EP (September 1983) though, Frazer’s vocals are beginning to reach for the ionosphere and the guitars and getting seriously floaty. This EP features majestic stuff like “Sugar Hiccup” and “From The Flagstones” and finds The Cocteau Twins learning how to sound truly majestic.
The classic CT line-up of Frazer, Guthrie and bassist Simon Raymonde was in place for 1984’s “The Spangle Maker” EP and by this time they were capable of classic songs like “Pearly Dewdrops Drops” (bizarrely, always a favourite at a local biker pub I frequented as an impressionable 19 year-old) and “Aikea-Guinea” and beginning to sound unassailable, even in an independent chart dominated by The Smiths as it was at the time.
This writer began to lose patience with the Cocteaus as they got to albums like “Victorialand”, though, and CD2 proffers the EPS “Tiny Dynamine”, “Echoes In A Shallow Bay” (both 1985) and “Love’s Easy Tears” (1986) from this period. To these ears, hindsight hasn’t been kind either, and tracks like “Pink Orange Red” and “Great Spangled Fritillary” still sound like a band in an ivory tower, drenched in reverb and blithely getting away with Frazer’s near-gibberish as she begins substituting baby-talk for actual lyrics. “Love’s Easy Tears”, though, is the nadir, with even the obligatory wash of sound coming across as plodding and hackneyed.
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The Cocteaus sounded like they badly needed a break at this stage, but it’s heartening to recall that when they returned with “Iceblink Luck” in 1990, they’d rediscovered songs as well as studio trimmings and come back re-invigorated. Liz’s vocals are way more approachable, the plodding drum machine had been updated and this joyful paean to either Jericho or cherry coke ( I could never quite make it out) remains as close to a regular pop hit as this awkwardly brilliant trio ever got. And d’you know what? It really suited them well.
There was more to come, of course, and we’ll get to that shortly with ‘Volume 2’. Part one of “Lullabies To Violaine”, though, is still the one that diehards and new recruits alike will return to and for all its’ pretensions and lapses into po-faced, glacial ethereality it’s the quintessential Cocteau Twins collection you’ll continue to cherish.
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