Cocteau Twins
Garlands

THE REVIEW

I will not mention Siouxsie Sioux in this review. It's the habit of all those who "touch" the first records of the Cocteau Twins. And no references to Joy Division. With all due respect to the aforementioned artists (whom I also love very much), the Cocteau Twins are something else.

"Garlands" is a debut album, not naive at all, as every respectable debut album tends to be, wedged between two sublime EPs: "Lullabies" and "Peppermint Pig".

The debut opens with "Blood Bitch": it's a continuous loop, that of the drum machine, which is heard from this moment: the ever-present Roland808 replacing a "real" drum kit makes everything even more obsessive and hallucinated. A distorted and shrill sound, on the other hand, born from Robin Guthrie's guitar, contrasts with the perpetual push of Heggie's bass. The line the band adheres to is essentially this, without, however, ever falling into monotony, even in tracks like "Wax And Wane", "But I'm Not", "Garlands", "Grail Overfloweth". This last piece, languid and unsettling, which has the task of closing this first LP, is perhaps the emblem of that claustrophobia often referred to in discussions of the early productions of the Cocteau Twins.

The central part of the album is certainly the most interesting: "Blind Dumb Deaf", despite the spectral atmospheres it evokes, anticipates a certain style typical of the band: the similarities with "Sugar Hiccup" contained in "Head Over Heels," their second work, or with certain sounds of "Treasure" (1984) and "Blue Bell Knoll" (1988), are very evident. "Shallow Then Halo" paves the way, instead, to that nursery rhyme style typical of Frazer (her surname is written like this on the booklet of this record: perhaps a printing error?) and so does "The Hollow Man": rhymes, alliterations, assonances...

Garlands, in short, is a great album. Perhaps not a masterpiece, but certainly a record that fans of solid Dark Wave must have. Consider yourselves lucky if you find it (or already have it) on vinyl: within the booklet are printed the lyrics of some tracks, otherwise indecipherable.