Review of Treasure Hiding: The Fontana Years
- By Jesse Dorris
- Pitchfork
- 18-Oct 2018
Collecting the sometimes-dismissed output of these pioneers between their masterpiece and their breakup, this box set sheds welcome light on how relevant many of these songs remain.
Before Cocteau Twins released their perfect sixth album, Heaven or Las Vegas, in 1990, they had spent the previous decade building a discography as innovative and amorphous as, say, Bowie in the 1970s or Aphex Twin in the 1990s. Their catalogue of curiosities sounded nothing like what had come before. Elizabeth Fraser’s voice could do anything and did everything, groaning like a rusty switchblade being opened, soothing like a dopamine flood in the brain, performing runs like Mariah Carey and Maria Callas combined. Her partner, Robin Guthrie, played guitar and programmed drum machines with the sui generis, near-mystical ease of Mark Rothko’s painting or Martha Graham’s motion. Simon Raymonde, who joined soon after the Twins began, offered unexpected choral basslines that propelled it all.
And then, Cocteau Twins began to break down. They left the label they’d defined, 4AD, in a flurry of financial and personal acrimony… and cocaine. The birth of Fraser and Guthrie’s child had largely inspired the wonder of Heaven, but becoming parents was no panacea. The survival of their marriage and the band seemed unlikely. When a single, “Evangeline,” arrived in 1993, the first shock was its mere existence. Treasure Hiding: The Fontana Years gathers their creations for a new label after “Evangeline”—four subsequent singles, their B-sides and the albums they accompanied, a pair of lovely EPs, some typically beautiful odds and ends, and a few live sessions. But Treasure Hiding is sometimes just good, its miscellany confirming suspicions that the Twins sometimes settled for spinning their celestial wheels. Nevertheless, revelations abound.
The second shock of “Evangeline” was the sound. It begins with a guitar being picked, something more identifiable than Guthrie had ever offered. And almost never before had Fraser just sort of stood there and sang. Michael Stipe could mumble and be hailed, and other guys made careers of bad poetry inspired by Burroughsian cut-ups. Fraser shaped assemblages of academic and arcane lexicons over the Beach Boys’ close and complicated harmonies, forming an inimitable style. Perhaps because she was a woman, fans sold it short as divine inspiration, while foes dismissed it as some girlie bullshit. A power ballad that could make Diane Warren proud, “Evangeline” suggests these poetics were always protective cloaks. “I had to fantasize just to survive,” Fraser announces over a tear-jerking final key change.
That directness—along with the title and unexpected singer-songwriter vibe of the accompanying album, Four-Calendar Café—carried through on “Bluebeard,” the next single. “Are you the right man for me?/Are you safe? Are you my friend?” Fraser asks over a very good imitation of the Smiths. Guthrie mostly abandons pyrotechnics for conservative comfort, but Fraser’s plain words take the risks as she ask questions we all should have for the men in our lives, our homes, our courts, our culture.
Four-Calendar Café is full of trauma’s echoes. On top of a very troubled marriage to Guthrie, a lifelong anxiety disorder, and issues of addiction, Fraser had finally decided to stare down the lingering effects of what, in Facing the Other Way: The Story of 4AD, author Martin Aston calls “sexual abuse she suffered in her youth, from within her own family.” In the icy “Theft, and Wandering Around Lost,” she sings, “My body is mine alone/And I deserve protection.” Out with the glossolalia and in with Kathleen Hanna, just sung like Karen Carpenter—these are easy-listening songs about the difficulty of being kind to yourself. At a moment when society has never seemed more divided between those who have survived abuse and those amused by its prospect, Fraser’s expressions of fury on her own terms feel timely and urgent.
A pair of EPs offered two paths forward in 1995: Twinlights is essentially Cocteau Twins Unplugged, asserting the good bones of early standards on “Pink Orange Red” and offering new odes to self-care on “Rilkean Heart.” Otherness adds the dubby languor of Seefeel’s Mark Clifford and remains fascinating. Further steps in either direction might have been fruitful, and the latter path might have even restored some critical acclaim.
Instead, they retreated for 1996’s Milk & Kisses; Fraser’s voice and Guthrie’s guitar meet halfway, both showing up but not showing off. Café’s rage has settled into turbulence, with Fraser beautifully exhibiting her linguistic filigree and Guthrie putting on a shoegaze workshop. “Half-Gifts” and “Eperdu” approach the old cathedrals of Blue Bell Knoll; B-sides like “Round” and “An Elan” are ineffable epics, not to be missed as the Twins neared their end. When Kisses closes with the bleak “Seekers Who Are Lovers” and the sound of blowing wind, it’s tough to imagine what could have been left. There wasn’t much, turns out—a few compilation appearances, a live session that doesn’t capture the fury and magic they summoned onstage. And then they split, probably for good.
More than 20 years later, it’s easy to remember Cocteau Twins for their otherworldly grandeur, their belief in turning toward beauty in the face of ugliness. That’s achievement enough. But Cocteau Twins did more. When, after years of hiding within invention, Fraser finally asked to be heard, she sang the words she needed to hear. We needed them then and now, too. The grandest of finales, Café’s “Pur” ends with words as charged as the band’s most groundbreaking music. “I’m glad you are a girl,” she sings. “You are angry and that’s OK/I am not afraid of your anger/What do you need? What do you want?/I love you, and I know that you can figure it out.” (8.0 out of 10) ▣
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