My scheduled 15-minute chat turned into a long, introspective, sometimes funny, sometimes somber interview.
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Die-hard Cocteau Twins fans were, no doubt, very confused by the cover of the Scottish trio’s new CD, Four-Calendar Cafe.
Instead of the usual arty, atmospheric images that have been splashed across the trio’s previous albums, singles and hordes of EPs – parallel universes, abstract images, suns sawed in half – fans saw a blue collage of everyday items, including screws, nuts, bolts and, uh, flowers.
“We just wanted to try something different,” Twins bassist Simon Raymonde explained by phone from an English hotel room. “We’d been saddled by this arty image that we just got tired of. We became a parody of ourselves. Everyone knew what the next record’s artwork was going to look like before it even came out.”
Along with the new packaging, the Twins also resurfaced with a tighter, cleaner, more focused sound. The new album isn’t as melancholy as previous efforts, and there’s actually some dream-pop material here that would make a killer single or two. Most important, lead singer Elizabeth Fraser’s angelic voice is finally audible.
So what happened? “Liz just wanted to get out all that frustration that was inside her,” said Raymonde, 30. “She was tired of her voice being used simply as another sound, rather than a meaning. Besides, we’ve all been through a lot of emotional upset recently, and one way of dealing with that is talking about it in a clear, concise way.”
Throughout their 12-year career, the Cocteau Twins have endured plenty of tumult. After forming in 1982, the trio, which then included Fraser, guitarist Robin Guthrie and bassist Will Heggie, immediately signed to Britain’s arty 4AD label and released its first disc, Garlands.
The next year, Heggie quit and the band recorded its next record, Head Over Hills, as a duo. Raymonde, who used to play in England’s Drowning Craze, joined later that year, just in time for a slew of London concerts and the recording of the Treasure LP, which found the band being compared to God.
“That was a bit of an exaggeration,” Raymonde said.
What wasn’t an exaggeration was the band’s growing popularity. But Guthrie, Fraser and Raymonde just weren’t used to being in the spotlight all the time.
“We shunned all that,” Raymonde said. “I don’t know, we’re still real insecure, even with each other. We know we’re good and all, but it makes us all a bit nervous to perform in front of each other, much less a big audience.”
Raymonde said that at one point it got so bad, the trio would create a record without even the presence of one another.
“Robin would come in during the day and lay down a track. I’d come in at night and add to it. Liz would do some singing whenever she could. That’s how we built some of our best records. It’s all a bit ridiculous sounding, but that’s how insecure we were.”
From that, an even greater problem soon evolved: The trio’s growing addiction to drugs and alcohol.
“Robin was the worst off. Liz and I were never addicts, but we did use. It had a lot to do with our insecurities. The drugs helped us get over that, or so it seemed. But now that we’ve all cleaned up, we realize we had to go through that as a band to come up with an album like Calendar.”
Saying the label had lost touch with their priorities, the Twins left 4AD in 1991 after the brilliant Heaven or Las Vegas album.
“It becomes difficult to talk about money with your friends,” Raymonde said. “But we just weren’t getting looked after.”
Capitol Records already had a licensing deal with the band, so the trio simply retyped the paperwork and called Capitol its new home.
Along with the new label, the new artwork and the new musical direction, the Twins have taken on a new approach to performing live.
“This is not the easiest music to reproduce on stage, y’know,” Raymonde said. “With only the three of us, it became more and more difficult to reproduce our songs. Whenever we played, it just sounded like a bunch of — noise. But we never cared before, we were so — up all the time.”
This tour, which starts in Houston, marks the first time the trio has ever used extra musicians. Four, to be exact – an additional drummer, an extra percussionist and two more guitarists.
“We finally figured, `Why not open up and try this with more people?’ As soon as we did, we said, `Why didn’t we do this in the first place?’ “
Raymonde said that at a recent concert in Glasgow, Scotland, the vibe and full sound was so strong and the crowd was so into it, he almost broke down . . .
“And cried. It was that special.”
The Cocteau Twins
Friday: 9 p.m. at the Bomb Factory, 2713 Canton St., Dallas. Tickets: $19.50 in advance, $22 the day of the show.
This story was originally published on Feb. 22, 1994.
