Cocteau Twins
Heaven or Las Vegas

THE REVIEW

As in the dialogue of "Phaedo" by Plato, Socrates, close to death, expires with his "swan song," bidding farewell with the most beautiful of his discourses on the Soul, so every man, every living being in every artistic or cultural manifestation, always departs with their most beautiful song before disappearing, swallowed by the end or forgotten.
Thus the Cocteau Twins, and with them many of the great authors we've lost along the way, after the great performances of "Treasure" and "Victorialand", leave the stage and scene through their last effort, which still tastes like music, that swan song of 1990 which is "Heaven or Las Vegas". It's the last genuine effort of Fraser, Guthrie, and Raymonde, the last work where we can still revisit the dreamy glories of previous masterpieces, the absolute last album: "Four Calendar Cafe" and "Milk and Kisses", which followed, will have nothing more to say.

In this work, everything fades slowly. It's a faint, subdued song in its more prominent attempts like the title track and the catchy "Iceblink Luck", a song that has now lost all the gothic colorations of its origins -"Garlands" now seems like a distant echo - and the dreamy atmosphere of that wonderful dream pop that made "Treasure" so loved just six years before. Some dense atmospheres like those in "Fifty-fifty Clown" (an attempt to recall the fine debut of "Five Ten Fiftyfold"?) and "Road, River and Rail", a small enveloping digression like "Fotzepolitic", some old-time vocalizations from Liz, and nothing more.
So why "swan song"? Where does Fraser’s soul expire, and with her, the Scottish-English duo? Right at the end of the album, in that final proud masterpiece that is "Frou-frou Foxes in Midsummer Fires", the last melancholy vital breath exhaled by the Twins. Liz gently returns to make love with words, revisiting the old patterns already cherished in "Pandora" from 1983, where with an abyssal alliteration of F's, she seemed to play a sweet and gruesome fellatio with the microphone, returns to play fast and loose with all the phonemes at her disposal, enchants and mesmerizes for long minutes, makes us subservient and exhausted. Here the swan expires, bids farewell, makes it clear that the Cocteau Twins stop here, and the hope of seeing them again as before is perhaps entrusted to a second life, when in a not impossible future scenario, why not, we’ll see them again on the scene to enchant us with their dreamy lullabies. We wait eagerly; meanwhile, the Fraser's song still resounds undaunted.

"... Singed by it, pulled around of my blazening
(pulled round)
Eyes on the usually science of cherry-colored
(trousers)
Limelight not the music it’s plain as as can be so
(tighter)
All of the time I improvise by making sure
(tighter)
It’s to wait for you
Rounder
Pulled rounder..."