In contrast with most people, at the time and since, I think most of The Cocteau Twins recorded output is a heap of pish. Unintelligible gibberish with silly titles warbled by a nice looking girl in a Pre-Raphaelite frock and lots of reverb on the guitar. None of it has ever really moved me and a lot of it I find pretty irritating. It all encouraged deeply foolish reviews of the 'sonic cathedral' kind, from writers who should have known better and had evidently, just swallowed a dictionary in a vain attempt to convey what it all sounded like, particularly in Melody Maker as I recall. Perhaps the band got a bit better at the end with Heaven or Las Vegas but listening to that now I'm not entirely sure. They have no discernible muscle.
The only Cocteau Twins I really liked was their early stuff when they clearly wanted nothing more than to actually be Siouxsie & the Banshees, a Scottish version. Garlands is a pretty good debut though the Banshees influence is overpowering. The Peppermint Pig twelve inch is the one that got me and the only Cocteaus record I ever bought.
I still love every song on here, perhaps preferring the B Sides to Pig itself. They're twisting the Banshees into new shapes, beginning to find their own voice. If I didn't care for them so much when they did really doesn't matter. This is where they're at for me. I still love this atmospheric, indisputably Gothic swirl of sound.
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