Over nine years later, and it still hits me like when I listened to the first time. That's all I need to know, really.
There was some review somewhere -- I think by Simon Price, actually -- that said that Cocteau Twins collectors and fans seemed a bit like porn hounds. Having a little bit, sure, having everything -- uh, why? And for what purpose? I don't have everything myself, but admittedly, I come pretty close. And I'm talking about the Cocteaus, thank you very much. Named after a Simple Minds song from the early early days, so why weren't that band any better after Sparkle in the Rain, I ask? These things often come to mind.
So this album, then. Their last for 4AD, end of an era and all that. A distinct change, too, from Blue Bell Knoll. That was almost too ornate, effects-ridden to the point where it was almost nothing but effects, and that isn't always a good thing, you have to understand. So here they cut things back just enough, and Liz Fraser decided to become a little more clearer, a touch, just a touch, more understandable. Not by much, though, just enough, like the music. One spin of the darn thing, and you immediately realize what just about everybody was listening to after they finished with Isn't Anything, or so it seemed.
It's the way that "Iceblink Luck" somehow ended up on commercial radio in America -- only god knows how -- with that Robin Guthrie acoustic guitar turned into a glistening fall of rain and Simon Raymonde's bass getting all Peter Hooky for the hell of it, not to mention the beats doing pretty nicely and Liz being Liz, something about "exquisite stuff," but more importantly knowing just how to sing against herself and her overdubs, and making it all quite purty. And the way that "Fifty-Fifty Clown" and "Cherry-Coloured Funk" make you want to dance and swoon in digital at the same time, that sound of thing. Instabliss, ya know.
Or there's the way the title track has this guitar break at points which is only about, what, four notes total, yet scrapes the sky every time still, a perfect killer sparkle. Or how about how "Fotzepolitic" slams up and then goes, a beautiful, artful descent, Liz in excelsis over a young girl's dreams, and the way Robin lets loose at the end, sculpted aural beauty, every last metaphor used to describe the band over the moons all come perfectly true.
"Frou-Frou Foxes in Midsummer Fires" is perhaps the ultraultimate Cocteau title. I hear the careful sense of tension and release, the way everything brilliantly opens and shines, the lovely choruses, the way a band can just nail it in the best of ways, and I smile.