20. Wax and Wane (1982)
At first, Cocteau Twins gave every impression of being a goth band: check out Wax and Wane’s Banshees-esque ambience – the guitar is very John McGeoch – flanged bass and drum machine. But the chorus soars out of the metaphorical cloud of dry ice, and Elizabeth Fraser’s voice is already outpacing her influences.
19. Half-Gifts (1995)
One of several intriguing new directions explored towards their career’s end, the Twinlights EP offered the unlikely sound of Cocteau Twins more or less unplugged: set to piano, strings and a whisper of synth, Half-Gifts is entirely lovely. (If you prefer, there’s an equally beautiful, sonically lusher version on their eighth and final album Milk & Kisses.)
18. Those Eyes, That Mouth (1986)
In an oeuvre filled with breathtaking moments, the point where the chorus of Those Eyes, That Mouth kicks in – when the guitar suddenly blooms into a sheet of ringing sound and Elizabeth Fraser hits a succession of high, shivering notes – is among the most breathtaking of all.
17. Know Who You Are at Every Age (1993)
More direct – and emotionally troubled – than anything Cocteau Twins had previously recorded, major-label debut Four-Calendar Café was coolly received on release. But time has burnished its power: this album opener marries a languorous acoustic guitar to lyrics that unflinchingly describe being trapped in post-breakup grief.
Cocteau Twins performing live, c1994. Photograph: Patrick Ford/Redferns16. Pandora (For Cindy) (1984)
You could view the Cocteau Twins’ third album, Treasure, as a series of musical portraits – every track is titled after someone’s name. Fraser’s voice takes on a propulsive quality during the lovely Pandora (For Cindy), but the star here is the band’s most underrated asset: Simon Raymonde’s bass, delicately threaded through the track.
15. Musette and Drums (1983)
A moment from breakthrough album Head Over Heels where the Cocteau Twins’ goth past still loomed large. Musette and Drums sets Fraser’s new, more abstract vocal style amid a dark cloud of distorted guitar; the effect is powerfully ominous and brooding, not adjectives much applied to their subsequent output.
14. Sea, Swallow Me (1986)
A perfectly judged collaboration with the US composer Harold Budd, The Moon and the Melodies is a dream of an album. Largely comprised of melancholy, reverb-heavy instrumentals, here Fraser adds a note of exhilaration as her voice soars above Budd’s treated piano and Guthrie’s multi-tracked guitar on opener Sea, Swallow Me.
13. Cico Buff (1988)
In a more sane world – and indeed one where the band bothered to release any singles at all from their fifth album Blue Bell Knoll – the drowsy, contented, sunlit sigh of Cico Buff might have been a hit. Still, the good will ultimately out: it’s currently enjoying viral ubiquity on TikTok.
The band in 1993. Photograph: Dave Tonge/Getty Images12. Heaven or Las Vegas (1990)
Cocteau Twins’ sixth album Heaven or Las Vegas may be the band’s masterpiece: all of its tracks have a claim to be on this list. But the title track is a particular joy, a subtle tweaking of their sound that leaves it brighter and more commercial – that chorus! – without sacrificing the band’s uniqueness.
11. Rilkean Heart (1996)
As with its predecessor, the Cocteau Twins’ final album Milk & Kisses got a decidedly mixed response: more than one critic suggested the band were treading water. But it has its moments, not least the dreamy, cyclical melody of Rilkean Heart on which Fraser examines her relationship with Jeff Buckley.
10. Bluebeard (1993)
Bluebeard was a deeply improbable delight in a number of ways. Firstly, who in the 80s could have imagined a Cocteau Twins track audibly influenced by country music? Secondly, who would have thought they’d ever come up with a lyric as incisive and direct as its examination of a collapsing relationship?
9. Lazy Calm (1986)
Victorialand is Cocteau Twins’ most recumbent, ambient album. With Simon Raymonde absent, Fraser and Guthrie simply did without his bass and largely dispensed with rhythm tracks: there’s a solitary bass drum on Lazy Calm, but its sax-assisted sound appears to float and drift along, appropriately languid and impossibly gorgeous.
8. Pink Orange Red (1985)
The pick of the eight songs on the twinned EPs Tiny Dynamine/Echoes in a Shallow Bay, Pink Orange Red slowly builds from an intro featuring nearly a minute of a solitary echoing guitar, through a chorus that deploys Fraser’s “mouth music” vocals to stunning effect, to a blazing, swooning climax of guitar.
7. Frou-Frou Foxes in Midsummer Fires (1990)
Beneath the playful none-more-Cocteaus title lurks a serious song, written by Raymonde about his father’s death. A famed 60s songwriter and arranger, he gets a suitably epic send-off: the song surges and ebbs, Fraser’s voice is simultaneously weightless and soulful: her ability to convey emotion without (identifiable) words at its finest.
6. Sugar Hiccup (1983)
Head Over Heels was the album on which the Cocteau Twins came into their own: leaving the goth affectations behind, Fraser and Guthrie wrote songs that explored their burgeoning relationship in a sumptuous, dreamy rush of sound. The single Sugar Hiccup sounds ecstatic, cathartic, infectiously dizzy with love.
5. Carolyn’s Fingers (1988)
Fraser described the Blue Bell Knoll album as the sound of the band “going with the flow, without expectations”, and you can hear it in the ecstatic Carolyn’s Fingers: the sound is poppy but utterly their own; extravagantly rolling her Rs, you sense her delighting in what her voice can do.
4. Lorelei (1984)
There’s a surprisingly funky undercurrent to Lorelei – you could, at a push, dance to it, albeit in a like-no-one’s-watching way. But its beauty lies in the interplay between the music – a murky cloud of guitar and synth – and Fraser’s vocals, an awesome multitracked patchwork of gasps, coos, even snarls.
Robin Guthrie and Elizabeth Fraser in 1983. Photograph: Kerstin Rodgers/Redferns3. Aikea-Guinea (1985)
More than any band, Cocteau Twins inspired the purple strain of music journalism mocked with the phrase “cathedrals of sound”. But how do you capture the shimmering, fluttering magic of Aikea-Guinea without florid metaphors? Perhaps in the more earthy terms deployed by Guthrie: “It pisses over most things we’ve ever done.”
2. Cherry-Coloured Funk (1990)
It says something about how far ahead of the game Cocteau Twins were that a sound they’d begun exploring in 1983 sounded perfectly of-the-moment in the shoegaze era of 1990. But on Cherry-Coloured Funk, they outstripped their imitators: its shift from moody verses to enraptured chorus is divine.
1. Pearly-Dewdrops’ Drops (1984)
You can argue for hours about whether it’s their best track, but if you wanted to play someone who’d never heard Cocteau Twins something that absolutely encapsulated their unique appeal – unintelligible lyrics, booming drums, chiming effects-laden guitar and all – Pearly-Dewdrops’ Drops would be it. It’s a blissfully melodic song blessed with an entirely extraordinary vocal performance by Fraser. Swooping, wailing, simultaneously utterly impassioned and completely incomprehensible, as if she’s singing in tongues in some wild, beatific state. Cocteau Twins may have proved hugely influential – the entire subgenre of dream-pop exists in their shadow – but 40 years on, no one else has ever really sounded like this.