Cocteau Twins
The Spangle Maker

Unfortunately, I can't help myself: listening to the Cocteau Twins' albums inevitably leads me to write a few lines about them. After all, they are a band that certainly deserved all the attention they received from both critics and the public, up to the mid-nineties. But then? Who remembers the Cocteau Twins anymore? And who remembers this album, which melted the hearts of thousands of cynical dark music fans back in 1983?

The album draws inspiration from a photo by Gertrude Kasebier from the early '900s, the same photo that appears on the cover and depicts a young woman curiously observing a large crystal sphere. A suggestive image, just as suggestive as the music pressed into these grooves. The grandeur of "The Spangle Maker" and the romantic "Pearly Dewdrops' Drops" ("the drops of the pearly dewdrops," what a bizarre play on words! And even more bizarre are the incomprehensible, as usual, inscrutable lyrics), which, with their veiled sexual allusions, take us to a very distant image from the gloomy "Peppermint Pig" or the anguished "Lullabies," yet still remain full of a sweet, melancholic, mystery. And then the enigmatic, very sensual, "Pepper Tree", closing the magic of this album with the suggestive ticking of an ancient pendulum clock...

The 45 rpm taken from the extended is still called "The Spangle Maker," but the title track is missing: side A becomes a reduced version of "Pearly Dewdrops' Drops" (edited down to three and a half minutes, lacking the choir and the initial music box and slowly fading out), and side B is "Pepper Tree," while the CD version (released only in 1990) includes "The Spangle Maker," "Pearly Dewdrops' Drops (12" Version), "Pepper Tree" and "Pearly Dewdrops' Drops (7" Version)".

"Lullabies To Violane" features, alas!, a slightly messed up version of "Pearly Dewdrops' Drops (Alternate Version)". I wonder why Robin Guthrie wanted to tinker with such a masterpiece: if the choice to remanipulate the song was made for "space reasons," he could have easily included the 7" version, as with "Peppermint Pig". Mystery...