Review Summary: Blue Skied An’
As you well know by now, dream pop’s flagship band Cocteau Twins are famous for a number of good, noble, dazzling things - and how good! noble! and dazzling! they are! However, they also have points of infamy: first and foremost, what the [i]fuck/i] are they saying, but let’s also spare a thought for the hideous beautiful mass of EPs that a relative minority of their audience pays any attention to. Just look at them: get Wiki up and give those titles a scroll. Terrifying, right? You listen to all eight LPs, think you’ve covered a whole discography, but suddenly you’re hilariously
wrong and it turns out you have only just begun. Yikes.
Isn’t that cool? Doesn’t it freak you the hell out? Same. But all is not lost and the task now at hand is not hopeless: the EP targeted by this review happens to be really nice, so let’s start there. Its name is
Sunburst and Snowblind and it marks the point where Cocteau Twins went from a talented Siouxsie and the Banshees tribute act to an entity in their own right, along with their second LP
Head Over Heels (released literally one week prior in the backend of 1983). Back then, the entity in question was formed only of vocalist Liz Fraser and everything else-ist Robin Guthrie (bassist Simon Raymonde had yet to enlist), but this has little bearing beyond that greater things lay ahead for them.
This is non-fatally obvious throughout the EP: much like
Head Over Heels, it catches the pair in transition. Their iconic ethereal--crystalline--ornate dreamsound was still under development here, accompanied by vestigial post-punk-isms. “Hitherto”’s clangorous sustained guitars are the most obvious example of this, but their drum machine evokes all manner of associations with glum, dated ‘80s gloomrock with its focal role within every arrangement. This would fade further and further into the background as Fraser’s inflections gained enough gravity to assert their own rhythm, yet here it’s ploddingly central and distinctly crutch-like, given that the atmospheres here verge on self-sufficient.
Post-punk does pay off though, sometimes: akin to
Head Over Heels’ “In Our Angelhood”, closer “Because of Whirl-Jack'' integrates the Twins’ gossamer sheen with a more urgent uptempo rock sound rather successfully. Guthrie’s Hook-ish quaver basslines propel the song more than adequately, but they still feel very much like a borrowed vocabulary; he sounds competent, but not distinct. Similar shadows hang elsewhere; even “Sugar Hiccup”, arguably the first Cocteau Twins staple (enjoying an encore from
Head Over Heels as such), feels a little primitive in its murky cycle between glacial verses and a time-stoppingly protracted refrain. It’s got something; you can
feel it, but it sure as sunshine feels more like a long trudge than the end of a road.
In other words,
Sunburst and Snowblind is every inch a transitional work, but I don’t think it’s fair to brush it off as such. Most will agree that the Cocteau Twins sound didn’t come into its full strength until 1984’s
Treasure, but there’s a sense of tentative excitement here that
Treasure never indulged the same way. Good ol’ thrill of discovery and all that - only, the Twins being the ur-blissout that they were, the thrill in question is drawn out to a slow-soaking wave of sentimentality. The gorgeous “From the Flagstones” sums this up perfectly, teasing the sound of future classics while evoking the magic of the Twins catching sight of those inspirations for the first time. There’s something to its hazy drift and spangled dialogue of arpeggios that points as far ahead as
Victorialand’s iconic opener “Lazy Calm”, but that track’s breath-siphoning immateriality was in its infancy here. “...Flagstones”’ momentum draws much more than necessary from its percussion, Fraser’s lyrics are shockingly intelligible, and its gentle progression seems more geared towards nursing an atmosphere than sweeping its audience away with it. Baby steps, beautiful baby steps.
If there’s delight and endearment to be had in hearing the Twins find their feet on this track, “Hitherto” follows on to raise this to a near-menacing intrigue, a much darker cut that wears their gothic roots as a dramatic counterpart to their new flair for the majestic. Drawing equal strength from their past and future trajectories, it’s the most confident track on the EP, and, to its great credit, it belongs entirely to this time and place, evading backhanded categorisation as a precedent for something superior the Twins would later release in the same vein. At a push, it could have occupied the same showstopper “rock” slot on
Treasure as “Persephone”, but it’s impossible to imagine it on any release beyond that. Cocteau Twins grew out of its particular brand of gothic and settled into airier realms, but this doesn’t make “Hitherto” any less compelling as a showcase of their early best - and that goes for
Sunburst and Snowblind as a whole. It’s great as a relic and great as an EP and great as a collection of solid Cocteau Twins songs - and, let’s be real here, isn’t that title just a treat?
