Searching for Treasure

At the outset of 1984, the intense pace of Cocteau Twins’ career showed no signs of letting up. A landmark came in January, when Robin and Liz played their first shows in the United States—and their last as a duo—with performances in New York and Philadelphia, generating coverage in the American music press. The band still lacked wide distribution there and elsewhere outside the UK and Europe—fans had to buy most 4AD records as costly imports. However, the visit helped broaden their fan base, which was growing rapidly. The media outside the UK were also markedly more enthusiastic, or at least less fickle.

After returning home, the band—now restored to a trio—played more live dates in the UK and Europe and managed to write new songs. They decided to release an EP for the time being to get a feel for the new line-up and to satisfy demand for new music. One of the new songs, “Pearly-Dewdrops’ Drops,” might have found a place on Sunburst and Snowblind, as a version had already been recorded at Palladium in Edinburgh before Simon joined the band. This version found its way onto a 1984 cassette-only compilation called Dreams and Desires, issued by the Scottish label Pleasantly Surprised. Between January and March, the band composed and recorded two new tracks that would be released in April as The Spangle Maker EP featuring “Pearly-Dewdrops’ Drops” as the third track and the single alongside “The Spangle Maker” and “Pepper-Tree,” which was the single’s B-side.

In the title track, the drum machine—by now effectively the band’s uncredited fourth member—accompanies Simon’s bass as it lays down a dark, pulsing atmosphere. Elizabeth’s singing is powerful, almost declamatory, her words obscure—apart from those of the title, barely distinguishable—as her voice explores a peculiar dance with Robin’s droning, ‘e-bow’-effected guitar. The listener also notices that the track’s sound is fuller and the technique more adept (is that a synth chorus at the end?), while the enigmatic “Pepper-Tree” closes with the sound of a clock. “Pearly-Dewdrops’ Drops,” with its sing-song melody, is sweetly addictive. Following a more classic format (chorus - verse - bridge), the song evokes a world of light and joy, the guitar melody conjuring with filigree clarity what could almost be a children’s song.

Initial reviews of the EP in music magazines were somewhat mixed, but in Blitz, the journalist Jonh Wilde—by now a devotee—wrote: “With the latest single … they have reached a state of grace that is so rarely achieved within the limits of modern pop. Their heartthrob glow and chimeric radiance is like a metaphor for the highest visions, the most heavenly form of love. If you want it to be.”

The sleeve design for The Spangle Maker proved a departure for the band’s image as well, exchanging the impressionistic imagery of Sunburst and Snowblind for a more concrete approach. 23 Envelope again used borrowed photography—going back, as with Lullabies, to the historical archive and choosing an image from the Edwardian era by American photographer Gertrude Käsebier. This time the overall effect is more like product packaging. In a retrospective interview from 2018, the late Vaughan Oliver shared his conviction that “this is the strongest of the ones I did for them. In terms of reflecting the music, the ethereal aspect of their sound and lyrics, it’s there in that image. It’s from the early days of photography. It looks more like a painting. The typography on the back was also a reference to where I had been working previously in mainstream packaging, on perfumes. It was the first time I had tried that very elegant, classical approach.”

By summer, Cocteau Twins had taken the new material on the road. “Pearly-Dewdrops’ Drops” climbed as high as number 29 in the UK national charts, peaking at number one in the independent list. No other Twins song had reached that level, which made it something of a crossroads for band and label alike. 4AD collaborated with 23 Envelope to produce the first Cocteau Twins promo video to market the song. According to Simon Raymonde, in his 2024 autobiography, In One Ear: Cocteau Twins, Ivor and Me, Cocteau Twins had not taken advantage of the burgeoning music video format because they had been following the lead of their mentors at 4AD, who had not seen much use in it. But they trusted them all the same and agreed to do it.

They had initially hoped to secure the talents of video director Tim Pope, whose work had elevated The Cure and given them a more pop-friendly appeal. Pope, though interested, was unavailable. Directed instead by John Scarlett-Davis, with 23 Envelope’s Nigel Grierson behind the camera, the Twins hoped for the best anyway. Scarlett-Davis was an established director by then, and had worked with Robin and Liz previously on the video for “Song to the Siren.” But while he was a familiar face, the trio’s hopes for something beyond “po-faced Goths” as Simon put it, were diminished, especially once they saw the location: Virginia Water near Great Windsor Park in far southwest London, with the abandoned Holloway Sanatorium, a chapel, and the park as the main settings. Simon: “We figured he would be using the location for the atmosphere and vibes, but being filmed gliding […] around moodily in that hallowed church setting just felt so ‘goth.’ It confirmed this existing stereotype that we felt wasn’t us at all, so we were in the weird situation of not having made a promo video before and really trying to be enthused, but at the same time feeling uncomfortable, awkward and really unsure how to extricate ourselves from this predicament […] Ultimately, we just hoped that the final video would turn out OK in the end.”

For someone so prone to crippling shyness and anxiety on stage, Elizabeth demonstrated an ease with the camera and a kind of confidence in her role as frontwoman, especially when compared to her more nervous performance in the “Song to the Siren” video from the year before. The band, however, found the final product—filled with quasi-Gothic religious imagery—hackneyed and off-base, as feared. In Simon’s own words, “I thought we looked like a bunch of cunts.”

Despite this disappointing outcome, momentum was once again on their side, and the band was finally receiving the recognition for their work they had perhaps been denied the previous year by all the buzz around “Song to the Siren.” The popularity of “Pearly-Dewdrops’ Drops” also meant the BBC came calling with another invitation for them to appear live on the fabled TV show “Top of the Pops,” a glossy, mainstream showcase for established stars and promising newcomers. (They had previously been invited to perform “Song to the Siren,” but it likewise never happened.) As with the idea of a music video, however, the band was less than enthusiastic. For better or worse, their punk instincts and artistic sensibilities held sway, and they turned down the offer. It was a move that did not sit well with the BBC and, although the Twins would record one more Peel Session in September—as well as an ill-fated appearance on “Old Grey Whistle Test”—their relationship with the UK’s primary broadcaster was on thin ice.

In an interview with the popular music magazine Smash Hits in 1985, Robin had no regrets. “We couldn’t do it! We physically couldn’t do it. Could you do it? Get up on that stage full of balloons and dancing girls and flashing lights and mime along to your record? You can’t do that kind of thing […] No, that’s not the way at all […] If you want lots of people to look at you and think ‘Wow, he’s my hero, he’s bloody great’ and all that stuff, then you go on Top of the Pops and get on the front of magazines and play the game the usual sort of ways.”

“People presumed that, because we weren’t on, we hadn’t been asked,” added Liz. “But when they found out we were asked—twice—and said no, a lot of people wrote in and said we should have done it. They liked us so much they probably thought we’d stand out and change the programme.”

A few years later, she looked back more philosophically, exasperated at the memory and their former attitude toward fame. “It was punk rock and stuff. I guess we were … we’re still paying for that, you know what I mean? Apart from the clothes, we’re still pretty punk by our attitude, which hasn’t brought us anything. Sometimes I wish we weren’t like this. I don’t know why that’s still the case. It’s so damaging to everything we do. Everyone was just cacking their pants at the thought of success. I don’t know. I can’t understand it …”

Ivo also reflected on the time with equanimity. “We were very close, and I had agreed with them not to do that TV show with balloons everywhere. That was probably a mistake. I think they came to resent me for what they perceived as a lack of success, but they themselves had refused to do interviews or release singles from albums […] Everybody had the same mindset—the graphic designers, Vaughan and Nigel, weren’t interested in putting the bands on the covers, and the bands weren’t interested in putting themselves on the covers. They took their art seriously, and so did I.”

After a short break, talk turned to the next album. Ivo recalls: “I invited Brian Eno to meet with them with a view to him producing [the album that would become] Treasure. He arrived with a very discreet guy named Danny, who sat in a corner. Eno said to Robin: ‘I don’t think I should produce the Cocteau Twins because I don’t think I can be as brave as you were on Head Over Heels. That use of reverb was extraordinarily brave, but if you want a good engineer, why not work with Danny?’ To be sure, Danny was none other than Daniel Lanois, but at that time, Robin didn’t intend to work with anyone.” As Robin would later put it himself, “I was so happy to have done Head Over Heels on my own that I didn’t want someone to produce my next record.”

In a French interview from 1986, however, Robin’s recollection was more nuanced: “At the beginning, we just wanted to make a record in collaboration with Brian Eno, we wanted him to come and play on our album, nothing more. He immediately put himself in the position of producer; he wanted to be the great Eno who took care of the little Cocteau Twins, as in ‘Yes, I’m interested, I can make something out of your music.’ I don’t want to insult him, but he misunderstood us, because for us it was never about asking for the services of a producer, we don’t need one, it would be like cooking with too many chefs, it’s always bad. We would have liked a collaboration like he had done with Robert Fripp or David Byrne, but he wanted to treat us like he treated U2, for example. It’s always interesting to work with other people, but not in this way, not with such established roles.”

Despite some initial delays (or perhaps procrastination), the Cocteaus managed to get the album done, with Robin producing Treasure himself, as planned. The album came out in October—the same month 4AD released It’ll End in Tears—to both critical and commercial acclaim. In Ivo’s glowing estimation, “it sounded fantastic.” Treasure’s creation was, however, something of an ordeal by many accounts. The band spent an intense and rushed few weeks in August and September commuting between Palladium Studios in Edinburgh and Rooster in West London. After Garlands, Cocteau Twins had always written their songs in the studio, in the moment, their writing process organic and often spontaneous as they found inspiration through collaboration and experimentation. So soon after the success of “Pearly-Dewdrops’ Drops,” the pressure on the band to release an album was palpable, as was the sense that the next record would decisively shape the band’s future. At the same time, Simon had only just joined. The sensibilities, song-writing approach, and relationships—what would become their essential chemistry—had not had enough time to gel, and they were still exploring newly-available technology.

“After the Cocteau Twins had recorded most of the rhythm tracks for Treasure in other studios, they came to Rooster,” explained engineer Drostan Madden in a 2015 social media post: “Ivo thought that, although we were a small studio, we had a better sound. Rooster was an early adopter of new technology such as the Lexicon digital reverb. We were recording to analog tape, but the reverbs were digital. They sounded very modern. This was the very beginning of digital recording technology.” Owing to this novelty—and the lack of adequate time to really get the most out of it—the band saw some songs as unfinished ideas or promising sketches, but not their best work.

In Simon’s telling, “We spent a month doing the album and, because we never really spent any time properly in each other’s company, we were still getting to know each other. We’d only been friends for a little while, you see. We just sort of recorded loads of things, and then the album came out. It’s like an unfinished record with probably two good pieces in there somewhere. It’s our worst album by a mile.” While this critique of the band’s use of technology cannot be dismissed, it is worth noting that they were often the harshest critics—as well as the worst analysts—of their own work, a common conundrum for any artist.

The pressure to create seemed to have had the heaviest impact, and the greatest influence, on Elizabeth. Madden shared some studio stories and reflections and declared himself “proud to have been involved with this album” when all was said and done. After the initial versions of the tracks were laid down, “Elizabeth had quite a few vocals still to do … You might think that it would be a serene experience recording the Cocteau Twins, but normality was them screaming and shouting at each other, and swearing a lot. I remember that Liz would be listening to the music and singing the vocals and they would be completely fantastic. Then we’d pause and ask her, ‘How do you feel about that?’ She would say, it was ‘fucking shite,’ and she would hate it. So, we’d do it again and she’d say the same thing. She stood in there for several days, not liking anything that she did. And Robin was trying to guide her but to no effect. She was in a battle against herself.

“She would scream at him, and he would try to pacify her, and then she would tell him to get out of the studio. So, he would leave, and I’d say, well, Liz, do you want to try it again then? And she’d say, no, I can’t do anything until he comes back … I’d sit in my room, and she’d sit in her room in silence and maybe I’d ask her if she’d like some tea. Then Robin would come back, and she’d sing it again, and this time she’d like it. This would go on from 10 in the morning until 11 at night. Ivo would come and visit in the evenings after work and the three of us would be listening to her sing and just mesmerized, blown away. And eventually, she’d be too tired to sing, and she’d come in the control room, and she’d like it a bit. I think Simon came in and re-recorded some bass, all done in five minutes.”

Ivo remembered the process in similar terms. As he recounted to Martin Aston, “I got a call from Robin: ‘You gotta come up and help, Liz has got no words, she’s completely dried up.’ I went up and sat with her, with a dictionary, and wrote some fourth-form poetry—I wasn’t seriously suggesting lyrics, but I tried to kickstart it. But it was so awful and inappropriate and not what she wanted. There, for the first time, Liz started using words more phonetically than lyrically.”

Necessity is the mother of invention, and inspiration often springs as much from constraint as hard work, determination, and commitment. Necessity and inspiration both helped bring about this turning point: Elizabeth decided to essentially stop writing lyrics and avoid singing recognizable words as much as possible. While fans claim to be able to hear some English or Scots words in roughly half the songs on Treasure, it seems quite clear that in the other songs, Elizabeth was singing pure vocalise—in effect, her singing had transcended language and become emotion as sound. This approach may have been a coping strategy to just get the record done, but the added layer of mystery created by Elizabeth’s wordless incantations had a profound impact on listeners and reviewers alike.

The ecstasies of the press culminated in Melody Maker journalist Steve Sutherland’s infamous declaration that “Surely this band is the voice of God,” a statement which haunted the band, and especially Elizabeth, for years. Later, she confessed that she had at first been “very angry about it. But now that we know Steve much better, we can understand why he said it, because he is so enthusiastic about everything and feels things very deeply.” Nevertheless, from the band’s perspective, these paeans generated unrealistically high expectations which, they feared, could only lead to disappointment. For his part, Robin also doesn’t exactly look back fondly on the album’s reception: “I’ve always detested Treasure. Not because of the record, but because of the vibe at the time, when we were pushed into all that kind of arty-farty Pre-Raphaelite bullshit. And so I was just really ashamed of [it].”

For the fans, though, Treasure remains a milestone in the Cocteau discography. Critics’ tendencies to associate the band with the Pre-Raphaelites were likely encouraged by three factors: the often-Arcadian character of Treasure’s music (strumming, chimes, and chants); song titles involving nineteenth-century names and/or classical myths; and the sleeve design. It was Elizabeth who had the rather idiosyncratic idea of giving the songs proper names derived from mythology (“Lorelei,” “Persephone,” and “Pandora”), literature (“Amelia” and “Aloysius,” Lord Sebastian Flyte’s teddy bear in Evelyn Waugh’s 1945 novel Brideshead Revisited), a flowering plant (“Cicely”), their label manager (“Ivo”), and names chosen simply for the beauty of their sound (“Donimo,” and “Otterley”) which evoked the enchanted air of a Victorian nursery rhyme. While such names may indeed have had something in common with Pre-Raphaelite aesthetics, Fraser herself was more matter-of-fact in her explanations. “I had three titles, but they didn’t feel right. Just not right. So, I thought of all the names I really like … I just like names like those, compared with John or Steve…or Boris.” Years later she mused: “I thought it was a really good idea, because I thought, well, what are people gonna see in these names? They’re gonna realise it’s got nothing to do with mythology and all that bollocks. Well, it’s not bollocks, but I foolishly thought people wouldn’t think we were into that sort of thing.”

As for 23 Envelope’s sleeve concept, Robin felt pushed too hard in a certain direction (though he was relieved not to see any fish this time around). The end result—duotone photographs of lace and satin drapery around a dress form mannequin (somewhat evoking a headless statue) emphasized a play of light and shadow. In 2021, American poet Christina Pugh described the effect as “ersatz Hellenic—a half-shattered Venus / in a sea-glazed cloud.” These images were accompanied by more formal typography, giving the song titles even more weight. This exquisite (and reportedly expensive) packaging appeared to mirror the album’s title, promising a rich trove within. Yet especially when viewed alongside the sleeve of The Spangle Maker from earlier in the year—the 1904 sepia Gertrude Käsebier photograph titled “The Crystal Gazer,” set against a decorative marble paper background—barbs like “Victoriana” and “Pre-Raphaelite,” however facile, were likely inevitable.

A disconnect had emerged between the image the band thought they were projecting and the one received—or perceived—by the public. The culpable party, Cocteau Twins believed, was a press eager to apply labels, to define, and to standardise, rather than simply surrender themselves to the pleasures of the music. This may have been the principal reason the band tended to mistrust journalists, even if some interviews would see them giving as good as they got. The result was a contradiction which the band liked to exploit by hiding and exposing themselves at the same time, but without playing the usual music industry games—or at least indulging them as little as possible. In time, this led more than one critic to suggest, with a note of resentment, there was no there there. Such an accusation played on an insecurity felt perhaps most by Elizabeth, whose contributions almost always came last in the song-writing process but which, in the final product, were front and centre.

The singer is a band’s “storyteller,” and as such Elizabeth’s words (or lack thereof)—including the song and album titles, which were her exclusive domain—were where the listener searched for meaning and a cohesive vision or concept. She possessed a special gift both for titles and their thematic continuity (if the word ‘thematic’ even applies, but one can see the song titles on each record do have a kind of consistency to them, even though they were often the very last thing to be decided—sometimes hastily—before the sleeves were finished). The songs were typically composed and recorded within the span of a few weeks, so they naturally held together; however, to imagine there was any grand or overarching concept behind it all was usually folly. It all became one more reason to clam up in the presence of speculative, chin-scratching journalists: Better to say nothing at all!

The band had by then developed a reputation for giving terrible interviews. The once candid and affable conversations they had enjoyed with the press from 1982 and early 1983 were becoming taciturn and even adversarial—or at least evasive—as they learned to be more cautious, choose their words more carefully (when they spoke at all) and punctuated their sentences with profanities, jokes, and non-sequiturs. Robin explained to Les Inrockuptibles in 1993: “The problem was that a few prominent journalists from the early 80s came to us bowled over by the so-called ‘grace’ of our music, convinced they were meeting the geniuses of the century. What they discovered, in fact, was ‘two football fans and a chick who reads romance novels.’ It was inevitable that we would have problems communicating […] We never felt comfortable with this need to explain, to talk, to pretend that everything is calculated and organised. The music comes from a place that I don’t want to explore or open to the public. We’re not a museum.” In a 1985 interview with Richard Walmsley of Electronic Soundmaker & Computer Music, given in the immediate wake of Treasure, Robin had given a more succinct response: “We’re not very good at sorta describing what we’re doing, because we shouldn’t be describing what we’re doing. […] We just do it. We shouldn’t have to explain it or anything. It’s up to the individual.”

Which is not to say they never revealed anything. Robin especially enjoyed going down a rabbit hole of music geek-talk. In the same conversation with Richard Walmsley, he explained that the powerful drums on Treasure (drums he claims not to have liked) sounded so real because they were actual samples of live drums played by John Bonham on the Led Zeppelin song “When the Levee Breaks.” The samples had come with the then-new EMU Drumulator, which had chipsets of such samples. As digital sampling had become more accessible, newer technology allowed for a broader canvas and more diverse toolkit. The Yamaha DX7—a synthesiser that could be heard on several 4AD records at the time, including It’ll End in Tears—also played a significant role on Treasure.

At the same time, Robin took pains to dismiss the idea that there was anything extraordinary about the Cocteau Twins’ song-writing process. “I could sorta talk to you till the cows come home about all different things we use to create our music, but I mean, it’s no different to what anybody else uses… if you think about it, what we use is basically very rock-and-roll; I use Fender guitars, Jazzmasters and things like that. We use Precision bass, Fender amps, so just in between that there’s a few little gadgets. There’s no special custom-made things, it’s just plain old Boss pedals—it’s just nothing different […] I mean, there’s no sort of trade secrets or how to get decent sounds. Quite a few times it’s just by accident. There’s nothing to it if you know what all the buttons do. Anyone can do it. Lots of people do. It’s just maybe the sounds I want are different from the sounds anybody else wants.”

And it is the music—the sum and transcendence of all the parts, without regard for specific elements—which remains the heart of the matter, enduring and outliving the context of its creation. In this new work, the band had leapt far ahead of The Spangle Maker and certainly Head Over Heels. Before dubbing them the “voice of God,” Steve Sutherland wrote in Melody Maker: “Without meaning to, without caring, Treasure is what so many strive for—a new pop music. Anyone can listen to this and feel enriched. It’s stirring, sensual, stately, subtle. It’s bubblegum spiked with acid. It’s candy-coloured. It’s timeless.”

The effects of Liz’s vocal training first heard on the song “Pepper-Tree,” which had signalled expanded capabilities and sophistication in her phrasing, reach new levels of expressiveness on Treasure, where she truly soars and takes extraordinary liberties in the opening track, “Ivo.” On “Lorelei,” multi-tracking—a studio technique which became a hallmark of her vocal arrangements—allow her to wrap her voice around itself again and again, while the contrast between the martial drums, the crystalline notes of the guitar, and the shimmering bass creates a singularly euphoric atmosphere. Meanwhile, the lyrics (or whatever they are) sustain their mystery. In “Beatrix,” the instrumentation evokes an almost Eastern ambience, which continues in the volutes of voices in the seemingly wordless “Amelia,” before giving way to the whispered and ethereal “Otterley.” Only “Persephone”—which showcases the voluble howl Fraser had perfected on previous records—seems to echo those earlier days. “Pandora (for Cindy)” is perhaps one of the most vocally dynamic of the band’s early career, with Fraser’s rapid-fire scat singing prefiguring some of the complex work she would do on subsequent records. Faithful to the band’s emerging tradition, the album closes with a bravura track, “Donimo,” which begins with choirs on a bed of synths, Elizabeth’s voice calling and answering itself for nearly two and a half minutes, awash in ambience, before detonating in a sublime explosion of sound, a ray of sunshine illuminating a dark, dank cave, when, with the drums’ powerful entrance, the track finds new momentum and introduces another melody that majestically mixes Simon’s bass and Robin’s guitars. The record ends on as impressive a note as it had started.

Treasure arguably represented a new triumph, topping the independent charts and reaching number 28 in the UK national charts. However, it also achieved the feat of being entirely original in form and at the same time familiar, despite Simon’s recent arrival. Early promotion saw the band appearing on the TV show “Old Grey Whistle Test” in January 1985 to perform “Lorelei” (they later turned in an arresting performance of “Pandora” for a television special that was ultimately never aired). It was this—coupled with the “Top of the Pops” snubs—that soured everything. Though the band had previously appeared on “Whistle Test” in February 1984, performing “Pearly-Dewdrop’s Drops” and “The Spangle Maker” impressively and without incident, they had also managed to cultivate a reputation for being difficult—a likely byproduct of Robin’s unwillingness to compromise the band’s sound and their lack of a proper manager to handle these kinds of negotiations on their behalf.

Though they were slated to perform two songs from Treasure, the recording of “Lorelei” proved so disastrous the session was cut short. What we see and hear in the broadcast performance is, in fact, a half-hearted rehearsal—Simon and Robin had even swapped instruments, for fun—and this is what the BBC engineers recorded to tape, calling it “good enough.” When Robin protested, claiming they hadn’t been told it was for final cut and demanding a retake, his concerns were dismissed. The situation escalated into a shouting match. With neither party backing down, the studio called the second session off and sent the band packing. And that was that, as far as the BBC was concerned, for more than a decade. Simon reflected on the incident lucidly, writing, “Robin, a smart, proud boy who no doubt had stood up to a lot worse in the playgrounds of his youth, was never going to back down, and I respected him for that… [he] was spot on here. When it came to music, he had principles and integrity.”

And they still had some friends at the “Beeb”: John Peel, ever an ally, had given his audience a preview in September 1984 when the band performed three album tracks—‘Ivo’, ‘Beatrix’, and ‘Otterley’—on his radio show (though at the time two of the tracks had only working titles: ‘Ivo’ was ‘Beep-Bo’ and ‘Beatrix’ was ‘Wheesht’). “Ivo,” “Beatrix,” “Pandora,” and “Donimo” would all end up on Peel’s annual “Festive Fifty” roundup (along with “Pearly-Dewdrops’ Drops,” “The Spangle Maker,” and “Pepper-Tree”).

Among their more luminous contemporaries, no less a figure than The Cure’s Robert Smith joined the chorus of praise, having listened to the album obsessively and declared it “the most romantic sound I’d ever heard,” even playing it as he prepared for his wedding. “It always intrigued me,” he added, “how they made it sound so effortless.”

Despite the lack of wide distribution (an international deal was in the works with Relativity) Treasure’s success and the band’s growing popularity meant they were able to fill concert halls beyond the UK and Europe. Following a string of European shows in late 1984 and early 1985, during which time the band recorded and released the EP Aikea-Guinea, the group made their first visit to Japan in September, followed by further dates in the USA.

The Japanese appearances in particularly left their mark. “The Japan tour was a culture shock,” Robin recalls. “We got our picture taken after 22 hours of flying. Elizabeth was not happy! […] They were so passionate, the Japanese […] We were mobbed! Not like The Beatles… After every gig, though, there would be people outside, people back at the hotel waiting for us, coming to the train-station to see us off—[some] places 2,000 - 3,000 [people].”

“Japan was … facken’ hell!” Elizabeth enthused. “I mean I was excited about going to Japan because I’d heard such things about it. I just expected it to be absolutely brilliant and it was better than that. I was useless by the way… It was too hot and humid for me to sing and I had jet-lag and everything. I couldn’t sing a bloody note. I couldn’t breathe. […] It was the first time they’d seen us. I don’t know if they were big fans. Treasure was the best-selling of our albums over there. On the record sleeve, they won’t hesitate to change the title, call it something different. Treasure is called ‘The Woman the Gods Loved.’ It might have something to do with ‘Persephone,’ I don’t know. It says on the sleeve that Robin does backing-vocals for us. And it says about us, ‘psychedelic but never freaky’! […] They thought Cocteau Twins were all girls.

“They all came to our gigs, never seen us before y’see, so they didn’t know what to expect anyway. They were brilliant, but a bit confused. They thought I was singing Japanese which must be a compliment. People were apparently looking towards each other saying: ‘Oh, they must have translated this, they must have sang [sic] in Japanese. Because they’re in Japan.’ That’s wonderful. I feel a bit guilty because I didn’t make the effort.”

Although its creators seem to think of Treasure as something of a missed opportunity, fans’ love for the record wasn’t lost on them entirely. Well into the 1990s, “Lorelei” and “Pandora” were regular features on live set lists, while “Aloysius” resurfaced on a late tour in 1996 in electronic form, reimagined through a collaboration with Seefeel’s Mark Clifford. Many years later, Elizabeth would also surprise and delight fans with a reprise of “Donimo,” also in quite different arrangement, for her sold-out solo performances in 2012’s Meltdown Festival in the UK.

By the end of 1984, Treasure was ranked among the best albums of the year, though it had spawned no videos as the band still distrusted the medium. Elizabeth was also voted best singer in magazine polls, and, in an unusual turn, an unauthorised picture disc containing a forty-eight-minute interview was released by Baktabak Records, during which the band clumsily tried to clear up misunderstandings about themselves, mostly in relation to their rejection of advertising and promotion. “There are other things more important than what people think about your look,” Simon told the reporter. The group came across as serious people who could not or did not wish to pinpoint where their inspiration came from and who shunned all forms of analysis. Though unable to describe what a follow-up to Treasure might look like, they did reveal that they would like to have their own studio. More than anything, however, they seemed eager to turn the page on a chapter that, while earning them significant praise, increased success, and wider recognition, also brought discomfiting feelings of exposure and a perceived danger of unrealistic expectations.

Frustrated, ambitious, but always intuitive, Cocteau Twins were groping their way through their universe at their own pace and according to their own laws, in a rare meeting of artistic integrity and public recognition. ▣