Treasure

A few years ago my then-girlfriend played me a track by the Cocteau Twins. She didn't tell me what it was called or what album it was on, but even though I only heard it once the bizarre haunting vocal line stayed with me. Four years later (about three months ago) I was flicking through the boxes at a cd fair and came across a cluster of Cocteau Twins albums and, on a whim, chose this one - hoping to find the track I'd heard. The song wasn't on here (if you're interested it was 'in the gold dust rush' from 'head over heels') but I haven't been so pleased with an impulse purchase in years.

There's very little point in me trying to describe what this album sounds like. Many have tried with varying degrees of success over the years. I don't want to just chuck in the words 'ethereal', 'haunting', 'other-worldly' which are staples used to describe pretty much anything more subtle than Jet these days. Let me put it simply...

This. album. is. wonderful.

It sounds like nothing I've heard before. The lyrics may be indecipherable but those strange syllables have been clinging to my ears ever since I first heard them. "peep-oh peach blow pandor pompador" - I don't know what it means but it's under my skin now and I don't think it's going anywhere.

Even aside from the vocals, which are the most immediately distinctive thing about this cd, the music is unique too. There are hints of My Bloody Valentine in the guitars, perhaps the jangle could bring you in mind of Felt, the keyboards and atmospherics can link to anything from Joy Division to Mogwai to Boards of Cananda but really comparisons are useless. This is unique and special. Only with repeated listening do you realise the sheer breadth of innovation on this record - I feel the urge to include the word 'Widescreen' at this point - the first time I heard it I think I was still recovering from the first track by the time it got to the end.

This isn't a very conventional review but that wasn't the point of it. I want you to buy this. I buy about 2 albums every week on average and I have done for years but the Cocteau Twins stood out so strongly that I was compelled to come and write an amazon review, and I don't write many.

I have fallen in love with this band to an almost embarrassing degree. I had a small tear in my eye on the way to work this morning with 'Heaven or Las Vegas' warming my ears, just because the music was so wonderful. As a deep-rooted cynic this does not happen to me often.

This is not a review, this is a plea - if you're considering investigating the Cocteau Twins then do. If you've never impulse-bought any cd before in your life then make it this one. The fact that you're even here reading this means you're probably not going to be disappointed.

It's true that you can detect certain superfluous similarities between those bands and this album, but, in all honesty, Treasure doesn't really sound like anything else. In fact, having subsequently purchased other Cocteau's albums, I've found that every LP that they've released sounds somewhat different to the one that came before. It's impossible to really explain their sound to someone who is unfamiliar with their work without falling back on a clutch of over-emotive and needlessly verbose descriptions, using words like glacial, fragile, fractured, haunting, ethereal, lush, lulled, incandescent, dreamlike, evocative, haunted - and so on and so on - in an attempt to sum up that distinct and magical Cocteau Twins' sound. As a result, Treasure seems to be beyond categorisation... one of those unique offerings that will delight some and infuriate others (see also; Talk Talk's Laughing Stock, Loveless by My Bloody Valentine, Scott Walker's Tilt, Medulla by Björk or the 2002 effort by Sigur Ros), by refusing to pander to the generic conventions of rock or pop music and, instead, disappearing into it's own private world.

The overall sound of the album is dense and carefully constructed, with each song conveying a certain mood or emotion as the band move from the delicate chamber pop of opening track Ivo towards something as abrasive and rock-like as the storming Persephone. Curiously, all the song titles seem to be old-fashioned names... I'm not sure why, but again, as with the art work and the overall sound of the album it works towards establishing a mood or perhaps a state of mind that somehow makes the whole unique world that the album creates all the more believable. This was really the first album in which the Cocteau Twins as a band (...here comprising of Robin Guthrie, Elizabeth Fraser and Simon Raymonde) really started to emerge with their own sound and perspective. So, Treasure is both an improvement on their fine second album, Head Over Heels, and a joyful precursor to the sublime albums that would follow, in particular, Blue Bell Knoll, Victorialand and Heaven or Las Vegas.

The sound of Cocteau Twins (and indeed, this album) is characterised by the integration of those layered guitars with those flowing and ethereal vocals. As would become something of a trademark on subsequent albums, Guthrie's approach to the guitar here was to layer an assortment of different tracks using both electric and acoustic guitars, which were then further augmented by a variety of different guitar effects and filters, so that instead of each song possessing a regular strum, elevated by the occasional burst of lead... like in traditional rock, they instead took on a more swirling and intoxicating sound, as each of the different layers would eventually merge into one another to create one harmonious whole.

Fraser's approach to the vocals is similar... so there's not just one vocal track, there are a few different parts all sung in different keys and tempos, so that when each of the instruments come together, we get a song that is almost hypnotic. The songs are further fleshed out by the strong rhythms of bass-player Raymonde and that recognisable electronic-drum sound that gives the songs a further element of the unique and anachronistic. Treasure is a magnificent, if completely alien-sounding album that requires work on the part of the listener, with a few sessions required before the entirety of the album fully sinks in. The most oft-discussed element of the Cocteau's sound is that the lyrics are almost entirely incomprehensible, with Fraser's vocals (...sometimes sounding angelic, sometimes sounding like a Japanese schoolgirl on helium!!) really pushing the songs into another universe entirely. Her vocal style, although unique and problematic for some, has been a huge influence on a number of female singers over the last twenty years, most notably the aforementioned Björk (more obviously in her early days as a vocalist with The Sugarcubes), Dolores O'Riordan from The Cranberries and perhaps Alison Goldfrapp (particularly on some of the tracks from Felt Mountain).

Some might consider Treasure to be a difficult album, though I prefer to see it more as an album to come back to time and time again (...preferably late at night...), with each new experience exposing new ideas and interpretations that you perhaps didn't pick up on the first, second or third time. If I was going to be pretentious about it (and why not?) I'd say that Treasure is like an ancient parchment in need of translation... Plainly speaking, however, I would say that Treasure is simply one of the great alternative rock albums of the 1980's, and is a good place to start for those interested in the Cocteau Twins' sound.