Deciding to scale back the overly pretty sound on Blue Bell Knoll while experimenting with more accessibility -- -- the Twins ended up creating their best album since Treasure.
The Cocteaus ground their soft-focus soundscapes with low-key, bass-driven rhythm tracks, a strategy that nicely enhances the music's appeal.
The album does have Vegas-like pop hooks and rhythms floating inconclusively through the songs. But that just makes the proceedings — with singer Liz Fraser’s pillowy voice swaddled in echo — sound even more appealing.
You know what?
If you can make something sound epic yet so emotionally personal,
You can take my money.
Is this album perfect? No. But it is one of the most beautiful things I've listened to.
Letting this album play over and over again while walking around your neighborhead at 12am is something otherworldly and I highly advise it. Cocteau Twins provide some of the most lush and thought provoking dream pop, and yes I still have no idea what Elizabeth is saying, and to be honest I'd rather not know just to keep my mind running.
Classics Week 2022 closes out with Heaven or Las Vegas, Cocteau Twins’ final 4AD album and one of dream pop’s most iconic statements.
Going through the top 50 of Rateyourmusic.com's top albums of all time list in random order:
Part 49: Cocteau Twins - 'Heaven or Las Vegas':
Boy the people on rym sure love their shoegaze. Right in the vein of mbv and Slowdive, Cocteau Twins find a good mix of heavy distortion and dreamy elegance. Listening to this feels like you're ascending to some higher plane. Using the vocals as a brush to add texture rather than as standard lyrics works very well, but as someone who values lyrics so ... read more
1 | Cherry-Coloured Funk 3:12 | 97 |
2 | Pitch the Baby 3:14 | 92 |
3 | Iceblink Luck 3:18 | 93 |
4 | Fifty-Fifty Clown 3:10 | 91 |
5 | Heaven or Las Vegas 4:58 | 98 |
6 | I Wear Your Ring 3:29 | 90 |
7 | Fotzepolitic 3:30 | 91 |
8 | Wolf In the Breast 3:31 | 89 |
9 | Road, River and Rail 3:21 | 87 |
10 | Frou-Frou Foxes In Midsummer Fires 5:38 | 95 |
#1 | / | Paste |