Cocteau Twins

I was clicking through the TV channels this year and I happened across an old music video for the song "Carolyn's Fingers" by the Cocteau Twins.

I was immediately enthralled by this lovely, unusual song, and I became an instant fan of this now disbanded musical group.

I had only a vague idea of who the Cocteau Twins were before this. I knew that they were a trio in the 1980s and 1990s with no twins or anyone named Cocteau in the group and that other musicians admired their work, but I had never heard their songs before, either on the radio or TV.

Elizabeth Fraser, the Cocteau Twins' singer, has a heavenly voice and a very unique singing style. I can't decipher many of the lyrics (if there even are comprehensible lyrics in some sections), which is apparently how she intended it. Her voice is more like a musical instrument and is not constrained by having to conform to the sound of conventional lyrics.

While the Cocteau Twins' music is generally alternative, they do have many beautiful and more accessible songs. Because their style is so unique, their songs have a timeless quality and don't sound at all dated like many other songs from the 1980s and 1990s.

My favorite Cocteau Twins song is the incomparable "Donimo" from their album Treasure. Treasure and Heaven or Las Vegas are their two albums that I'd most recommend buying.

Below is a playlist of my favorite Cocteau Twins songs, which includes quite a few songs from these two albums.

1. Heaven or Las Vegas - Heaven or Las Vegas
2. Donimo - Treasure
3. Carolyn's Fingers - Blue Bell Knoll
4. Summerhead - Four-Calendar Café
5. Lorelei - Treasure
6. Ice-Pulse - Bluebeard (Single) or Lullabies to Violaine
7. Fifty-Fifty Clown - Heaven or Las Vegas
8. Wolf in the Breast - Heaven or Las Vegas
9. Blue Bell Knoll - Blue Bell Knoll
10. Road, River and Rail - Heaven or Las Vegas
11. Cherry-Coloured Funk - Heaven or Las Vegas
12. Aloysius - Treasure
13. Athol-Brose - Blue Bell Knoll
14. I Wear Your Ring - Heaven or Las Vegas
15. Bluebeard - Four-Calendar Café
16. Frou-Frou Foxes In Midsummer Fires - Heaven or Las Vegas
17. Fotzepolitic - Heaven or Las Vegas

If you have iTunes (free), I have made an iMix called Cocteau Twins Favorites, where you can conveniently listen to clips of all of these songs except "Summerhead", which I unfortunately couldn't find on the iTunes store.

Videos of "Heaven or Las Vegas", "Carolyn's Fingers", and "Bluebeard" are available at the Cocteau Twins' website, and because these complete videos (QuickTime movies) include better quality sound than the tinny-sounding stuff at Amazon and Barnes & Noble, I would recommend listening to them instead (but not the live videos which sound like they were recorded with a cheap home video camera).