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Background information
Origin	Grangemouth, Scotland
Genre(s)	Dream pop
Years active	1982 - 1997
Label(s)	4AD, Capitol, Fontana, Bella Union
Website	CocteauTwins.com
Members
Elizabeth Fraser Robin Guthrie Simon Raymonde
Former members
Will Heggie

Cocteau Twins were a Scottish alternative rock band active from 1982 to 1997.

Contents 1 Early years 2 Mid-80s 3 Early 90s 4 Mid-90s and the breakup 5 Life after Cocteau Twins 6 Discography 6.1 Albums 6.2 EPs and singles 6.3 Compilations 7 Live performances 8 References 9 External links

Robin Guthrie (guitar) and Will Heggie (bass), both from Grangemouth, Scotland, formed the band in 1980. At a local disco, Nash, they met Elizabeth Fraser, who would eventually provide vocals.

The band's influences at the time included Joy Division, The Birthday Party, Sex Pistols and Siouxsie & The Banshees. The band were named after the song The Cocteau Twins by fellow Scotsmen 'Johnny and the Self-Abusers' (who later renamed themselves Simple Minds; the song "The Cocteau Twins" was also re-penned as "No Cure"). Their debut recording, Garlands (released by 4AD Records in 1982), was an instant success, as was the subsequent Lullabies EP. They themselves remain influential to aspiring post-punk acts today.

Although the entire band was praised for their performances, Fraser received the most attention. At times barely decipherable, Fraser seemed to veer into glossolalia and mouth music. All Music Guide reviewer Ned Raggett writes that "part of her appeal is how she can make hard-to-interpret lyrics so emotionally gripping."^[1]

Will Heggie left the group after the tour that followed the 1983 release of the band's second EP, Peppermint Pig (and subsequently joined Lowlife). The band's sound on its first three recordings relied on the combination of Heggie's rhythmic basslines, Guthrie's minimalist guitar, and Fraser's voice; Cocteau Twins' next full-length LP, Head over Heels, had to rely solely on the latter two. This led to the growth of Cocteau Twins' characteristic sound: Fraser's voice, by turns ethereal and earthy, combined with Guthrie's heavily effected guitars. (Guthrie has often said that he is far more interested in the way the guitar is recorded, than in the actual notes being played, though he later admitted the effects and layering were due to his own technical inabilities.) Like its very dissimilar predecessor, Head over Heels was well-received by the public and press.

In 1983, the band participated in 4AD's This Mortal Coil project (this spawned a cover-version of Tim Buckley's Song to the Siren performed by Guthrie and Fraser), and during their work for that, they got to know Simon Raymonde (formerly a member of Drowning Craze), who joined the group later that year as bass player.

With Raymonde, the band released a series of critically acclaimed albums and EPs that explored their new style. These included The Spangle Maker (1984), Treasure (1984), Aikea-Guinea (1985), Tiny Dynamine and Echoes in a Shallow Bay (1985), and Love's Easy Tears (1986). Raymonde, who was called in to work on the second album by This Mortal Coil, did not participate in the recording of the fourth Cocteau Twins LP, Victorialand (1986), a predominantly acoustic record which featured only Guthrie and Fraser. Raymonde returned to the group for The Moon and the Melodies (1986), a collaboration with ambient composer Harold Budd, which was not released under the Cocteau Twins name. The Moon and the Melodies is most noteworthy for the majestic composition entitled She Will Destroy You.

In 1985, 4AD signed an agreement with Relativity Records for distribution of Cocteau Twins' releases in the US and other territories. To commemorate the event, the compilation The Pink Opaque (1985) was released as a way of introducing the new, broader audience to the band's back-catalogue.

While remaining a 4AD band internationally, Cocteau Twins finally signed a major-label contract with Capitol Records in 1988 for distribution in the US, and released their fifth proper LP, Blue Bell Knoll, in October of that year.

The style the group had begun exploring with Head over Heels reached its peak on Heaven or Las Vegas, released in late 1990. The most commercially successful of their many recordings, the album rose to the higher reaches of the UK charts immediately after its release. However, despite the success of the record and the subsequent concert tours, not everything was well with the band. They parted ways with 4AD following Heaven or Las Vegas partly because of conflicts with the label's founder Ivo Watts-Russell, and were close to breaking up over internal problems due in large part to Guthrie's addiction to drugs and alcohol.

While on their international tour supporting Heaven or Las Vegas, the group signed a new recording contract with Mercury Records subsidiary Fontana for the UK and elsewhere, while retaining their US relationship with Capitol. In 1991, 4AD and Capitol released a Box Set that compiled the band's EPs from 1982 to 1990, and also included a bonus disc of rare or previously unreleased material.

The band's seventh LP, Four-Calendar Café, was released in late 1993. It was a departure from the heavily-processed, complex and layered sounds of Blue Bell Knoll and Heaven or Las Vegas, featuring clearer and more minimalistic arrangements. This, along with the record's unusually comprehensible lyrics, led to mixed reviews for the album: Some critics accused the group of selling out and producing an 'accessible album,' while others praised the new direction as a felicitous development worthy of comparison with Heaven or Las Vegas. The band themselves explained that Four-Calendar Café was simply a response to the turmoil that had engulfed them in the intervening years, with Guthrie entering rehab and quitting alcohol and drugs, and Fraser undergoing psychotherapy. The two had been in a long-term relationship, and by this time had a young daughter, Lucy-Belle, born in 1989.

1995 saw the release of two new EPs: Twinlights and Otherness. The former consisted of four gentle acoustic songs, recorded with only piano, acoustic guitar and voice; Otherness, by contrast, was a collaboration with Seefeel's Mark Clifford, and featured four electronic remixes of both older and then-unreleased Cocteau Twins songs. Both EPs were labelled 'experimental' by the press, since they were very different from the EPs the band had released in the past.

As it turned out, some of the tracks on both Twinlights and Otherness were versions of songs from the band's eighth album, Milk and Kisses (1996). The record was hailed as a "return to form" by some as it saw the return of more heavily layered guitars, and Fraser began once again to obscure her lyrics, though not entirely. Nevertheless, reviews were, for the most part, somewhat mixed. Two singles were taken from the album: Tishbite and Violaine; both exist in two CD versions, with different b-sides included on each. The band, augmented by an extra guitarist and a drummer, toured extensively to support the album - their last for Mercury/Fontana - and in live performances seemed to have found a cohesive freshness and power that had been lacking during their previous outing in 1993/94. A new song, "Touch Upon Touch", which debuted during the live shows and was recorded later in 1996, became the last Cocteau Twins song ever released. It was also one of the two songs written and arranged by Fraser, Guthrie and Raymonde for Chinese pop singer Faye Wong for her Mandarin album Fu Zao released in June 1996, the other being "Tranquil Eye" from Violaine released in October 1996.

In 1997, while recording what was to have been their ninth LP, the trio suddenly disbanded over irreconcilable differences in part related to the break-up of Guthrie and Fraser. While a number of songs were partially recorded and possibly completed, the band has stated that they will likely never be finished or released in any form.( In the same year Guthrie and Raymonde wrote and performed a new song in Faye Wong's the same name album.)

Fans of the group were not however, left entirely empty-handed. In 1999, Bella Union, the record label founded by Guthrie and Raymonde, released a double-CD Cocteau Twins compilation entitled BBC Sessions. The collection is a complete record of the band's appearances on UK radio programs from 1983 to 1996, with rare and unreleased material included. In 2000, 4AD released Stars and Topsoil, a compilation of selected songs picked by the band members that had been released during their years with 4AD; all recordings had been digitally remastered by Robin Guthrie. Finally, in 2003, 4AD followed Stars and Topsoil with the release of digitally remastered versions of the first six Cocteau Twins LPs.

The former members of Cocteau Twins have remained active musically in the years since the band's demise. In addition to forming Bella Union, Guthrie and Raymonde have produced releases from new bands signed to that label.

Simon Raymonde released the solo album Blame Someone Else. He also produced the posthumous album by Billy Mackenzie from the Associates, then went on to produce several Domino Records' artists like James Yorkston, Archie Bronson Outfit (who he later managed) and Clearlake. More recently he has produced the popular UK band The Duke Spirit and has mixed the Mercury Prize nominated album The End Of History by Fionn Regan.

Robin Guthrie released his first solo effort Imperial and continues to create music with his band Violet Indiana and has scored the music for the movie Mysterious Skin. He also reunited with Harold Budd to collaborate on two companion CDs: Before The Day Breaks and After The Night Falls. These pieces can be viewed as a continuation of The Moon and the Melodies and the score for Mysterious Skin. He most recently produced and played guitar on Apollo Heights debut album, White Music For Black People

Elizabeth Fraser provided guest vocals on Future Sound of London's ethereal sounding single 'Lifeforms' (1993), as well as vocals for three songs on Massive Attack's Mezzanine in 1998 (as well as touring with them several times), for the Academy Award-winning Lord of the Rings film soundtracks, as well as for other, lesser-known projects and groups. For some time, she has been working on a solo album.

On January 31, 2005 Cocteau Twins announced that they would be reforming to perform at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival on April 30, 2005, and later indicated that additional tour dates through the fall would be added. On March 16, however, the reunion was canceled, with Fraser pulling out for "personal reasons". In 2006, 4AD released a limited edition compilation box set Lullabies to Violaine, a 4-disc set that details every single and ep released from 1982-1996. This was shortly followed up by two 2-disc sets of the same names, known as Volume 1 and Volume 2.

Since March 2007, the band has started airing podcasts holding exclusive material.^[2]

Year	Album	UK	US	Additional information
1982	Garlands	-	-	debut album
1983	Head over Heels	51	-	-
1984	Treasure	29	-	-
1986	Victorialand	10	-	-
1986	The Moon and the Melodies	-	-	recorded with Harold Budd
1988	Blue Bell Knoll	15	109	-
1990	Heaven or Las Vegas	7	99	-
1993	Four-Calendar Café	13	78	-
1996	Milk and Kisses	17	99	-

Year	Title	UK	US Modern Rock	Additional information
1982	Lullabies	-	-	EP
1983	Peppermint Pig	-	-	EP
1983	Sunburst and Snowblind	86	-	EP
1984	Pearly-Dewdrops' Drops	29	-	EP entitled The Spangle Maker
1985	Aikea-Guinea	41	-	EP
1985	Tiny Dynamine	52	-	EP
1985	Echoes in a Shallow Bay	65	-	EP
1986	Love's Easy Tears	53	-	EP
1988	Carolyn's Fingers	-	2	from the album Blue Bell Knoll
1990	Iceblink Luck	38	4	from the album Heaven Or Las Vegas
1990	Heaven Or Las Vegas	-	9	from the album Heaven Or Las Vegas
1993	Evangeline	34	-	from the album Four Calendar Café
1993	Snow	58	-	"Winter Wonderland" and "Frosty the Snowman"
1994	Bluebeard	33	-	from the album Four Calendar Café
1995	Twinlights	59	-	"acoustic" EP, voice and piano
1995	Otherness	59	-	EP of songs remixed by Mark Clifford of Seefeel, companion to Twinlights
1996	Tishbite	34	-	from the album Milk and Kisses
1996	Violaine	56	-	from the album Milk and Kisses

Year	Title	UK	US	Additional information
1985	The Pink Opaque	-	-	compilation album
1991	Cocteau Twins	-	-	ten-disc box set consisting of all EPs up to that point and one disc of bonus material
1999	BBC Sessions	-	-	compilation album
2000	Stars and Topsoil	-	-	compilation album
2005	Lullabies to Violaine: Singles and Extended Plays 1982-1996	-	-	limited edition, four-disc box set of all non-album tracks.
2006	Lullabies to Violaine, Volume 1: Singles and Extended Plays 1982-1990	TBD	TBD	first two of four discs in box set shown above.
2006	Lullabies to Violaine, Volume 2: Singles and Extended Plays 1993-1996	TBD	TBD	last two of four discs in box set shown above.

See Cocteau Twins performances.

• Official Cocteau Twins website (cocteautwins.com)
• The Cocteau Cafe (cocteautwins.org)
• Official Cocteau Twins Forums (cocteautwinsforums.com)
• Internet Radio Station (cocteautwinsradio.com)
• UK Cocteau Twins website (cocteautwins.co.uk)
• Cocteau Twins Podcast (podcast.cocteautwins.org)