The nascent Cocs made two demo tapes. They sent one to Ivo Watts Russell at 4AD (home of their favourite band The Birthday Party) and the other to John Peel at the BBC. With decidedly Caledonian economy, one demo resulted in a record contract while the other delivered a session for the great DJ.
Formed at an indie club in a hotel in unglamorous Grangemouth, the Cocteau Twins (named after an early Simple Minds tune) coalesced when Guthrie and schoolmate and bassist Will Heggie recruited Liz Fraser as singer because they liked her dancing.
With instant indie charts success for their first LP, the band would go on to be one of the titans of the ’80s and early ’90s scene. But their influence ultimately spread much further and deeper than the UK’s indie chart. The band have been cited by some of the biggest mainstream acts: Prince and Madonna are two that spring to mind; and they went on to inspire a whole genre (shoegazing) as well as a host of more left-field artistes like My Bloody Valentine and Sigur Ros.
While the first LP shared more common DNA with the proto-goth of The Banshees than Nick Cave’s Birthday Party, the band soon developed their own utterly unique sound, augmented by multi-instrumentalist Simon Raymonde from their third LP Treasure.
They defined the whole 4AD aesthetic with Liz’s ethereal and otherworldly voice taking centre stage among heavily affected guitars and lavishly sculpted soundscapes courtesy of Guthrie and Raymonde. The band rapidly outgrew its early sound and continued to develop throughout their career, going from the sparse and dark 808-driven early work to their more ecstatically poppy and lushly ambient later output.
What always surprised me though was how they rocked live. In their mid-career peak through to their later years they positively destroyed venues with a huge wall of sound: four guitarists, two drummers and keyboards with Liz’s voice soaring over it all made for a massive, ahem, sonic cathedral of a thing. They were a formidable towering presence, rather than the polite electric chamber music some may have been expecting.
So sad that Guthrie and Fraser’s failing relationship and the guitarist’s spiralling drug use brought the band to a halt just as they were recording their eighth LP. To this day the band has a huge and loyal global following and they have been offered millions to reform, but never enough to tempt the timid Ms Fraser out of her semi retirement in Bristol.
Her recent (ish) solo shows by all accounts challenged Kate Bush in the raw emotions stakes with grown men and women weeping at the beauty of it all. The YouTube evidence indicates that her voice and talent are still intact and in full effect. Her fans await the release of her much anticipated first solo LP with only scraps and a single song (Moses) to keep them engaged for the last 20 years.
Guthrie continues to pour out beautiful music in his own right and as part of various collaborations (with old ambient spar Harold Budd, John Foxx and Mark Gardener as well as with the band Violet Indiana which I wasn’t a big fan of). His soundtrack work, especially with film director Greg Araki is also worth your attention. His trademark sonic incandescence is undimmed.
Simon Raymonde has dabbled in music himself since the Cocteau Twins implosion but is best known these days for championing a wide range of new music through the label he and Guthrie set up to put out Cocteau’s releases in the mid-‘90s, Bella Union.
We will never see their like again, but they left a stunning legacy and while Fraser has yet to find the confidence to release her solo material, Guthrie is a prolific composer and producer. I commend them to you all.
So Long Kid, Take A Bow.
