Cocteau Twins

Garlands

underrated and overlooked, but very well done

Review Score:

(10/10)
This is perhaps a more guitar-oriented album than most other Cocteau Twins albums; the roaring gothic guitar lines of Robin Guthrie dominate the soundscape, but without displacing Liz Frazer's deadly vocal stylings, which seem more sweet on most future releases. It's a chilling, very gothic piece of work. Though their first lp, it reveals a different side of the Twins' music.

"Garlands" came out in 1982, so it belongs to a scene and an aesthetic very different from the one that the Twins belonged to in the mid-80s. Think of Joy Division, Lydia Lunch, or early Siouxsie and the Banshees. The mid-80s indie and alternative scene, or at least the part of it that the Twins identified with most, was less intensely morbid or dark than the dense post-punk that had preceded it; so that a later Twins album like Treasure has a certain aesthetic identification with New Order or the Smiths. In fact, the change that the Cocteau Twins underwent mirrors the one by which Joy Division morphed into New Order. It was actually a very good thing that the aesthetics changed, but on "Garlands", you can hear a band that easily holds its own with (and even surpasses) something like "Pornography"-era Cure.

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