Cocteau Twins
Four-Calendar Café

THE REVIEW

Here they are, the connoisseurs/purists of the group who will turn up their noses at reading the review of the penultimate CD of the late Cocteau Twins!

Luckily, others will smile, appreciating this work as well (Fosca, I know you understand me!) and I would recommend it to those who don’t know it if: you like high-quality relaxing music, you seek a unique and emotional voice, engage in intellectual activities, roll around in bed alone or with company, lull to sleep and gift beautiful dreams, train vocal cords. "Know who you are at every age" dreamy and a bit sad finds Liz alternating a meditative song with a falsetto counterpoint while the guitars are effected to create small elastic whirlpools. "I cry, I cry...I've lost my self-identity...I don't want to grow up"... autobiographical references to Fraser in the midst of therapy. "Evangeline" serene and ethereal thanks to continuous guitar reverb and echoes creates a soft carpet for the voice that narrates a path of growth and healing. "Bluebird" lifts the mood, high-level easy-listening with fluid guitars played with slide and nightingale vocals in a praise of creativity and peculiarity of the male world... the woman is attracted but slightly wary, "Are you the right man for me? Will you be my friend or toxic? Will you betray my confidences?"

"Theft, and wandering around lost" returns to a slow, undulating, circular rhythm like the intimate and painful singing, perhaps the most emotional of the entire CD (addressing certain themes like rape and abuse is a courageous choice and perhaps impacts only a small portion of listeners..."words are important"...). "Oil of Angels" another evanescent and ethereal ballad. "Squeez-wax" is added to the numerous maternal tributes... "i fiji so' piezzi 'e core!" flows carefree and light on beautiful vocalizations and trembling guitars and double voices adulating the daughter ("no threats, no fights, Lucy, Lucy"). "My truth" slowed by electronic drums, distorted guitars with tremolo and a graceful xylophone accompany a voice as sensual as velvet. "Essence" with its rarefied atmosphere can recall the intro of "Lazy Calm" very beautiful double almost angelic voices. "Summerhead" is the most lively track on the CD, here drums, bass, and guitars are not subdued rather they are driving and the singing is more incisive. Closing with a gem that echoes the structure of the last track of "The moon and the melodies", after an introduction with short but continuous beats, various reverberations, and almost whispered and held back lyrics, you get catapulted into an apotheosis of harmonious and "luminous" sounds, the rhythm increases and the guitars are joyful. The voice finally comes out in yet another love anthem for the daughter.

Live, the magic amplified: the transition from the calm of the intro to the explosion of uncontainable vital joy was achieved by Liz emitting seagull-like high-pitched vocalizations and she gave us wings. I'm not ashamed to say that the emotion rose from my stomach, even the hairs inside my nose stood on end and I cried with joy along with many others present, then I took a flight from the sea to the mountains, passing through woods and all chromatic scales and back.

I don't take hallucinogens, I don't need them.