TRIBUTE: Celebrating 20 Years of Cocteau Twins’ Final Studio Album Milk & Kisses

• By Justin Chadwick
• Albumism
• 9-Mar 2016

Happy 25th Anniversary to Cocteau Twin’ eighth and final studio album, Milk & Kisses, originally released in the UK March 13, 1996.

At the risk of stating the blatantly obvious, few bands have achieved as much crystalline beauty through sound as the enigmatic Cocteau Twins did during their eighteen-year career. Across their eight studio albums, and nearly two dozen EPs and compilations, the Scottish trio of Elizabeth Fraser, Robin Guthrie, and Simon Raymonde proved masters of daydream-conjuring, goosebump-inducing songs that lodge themselves in your heart, mind, and soul for a lifetime. Indeed, their exalted, uniquely addictive brand of ethereal dream-pop produced some of the most spellbinding compositions heard during the 20th century’s final two decades.

The enduring permanence of Cocteau Twins’ music—a remarkable phenomenon considering that the group disbanded nearly twenty-five years ago—has much to do with the rarefied treasure that is Fraser’s voice, a stunning, operatic instrument that defies all comparison. An acquired taste for some, an unequivocal blessing for others, Fraser’s unorthodox approach to lyricism embraces a fluid hybrid between discernible English and indecipherable Glossolalia, the convergence of which has made for some of the most stirring vocal displays ever committed to wax. Though while Fraser’s voice was always front and center, her two comrades Guthrie and Raymonde, the duo responsible for the band’s lush, atmospheric wall of shimmering sound, played an equally influential role in the band’s success and indelible legacy.

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