“SPIN’s 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time”

• By SPIN staff
• SPIN
• 3-May 2012

#23 - Robin Guthrie (Cocteau Twins, This Mortal Coil)

In the mid 1980s, filmmaker David Lynch was so enamored with This Mortal Coil’s “Song to the Siren”—featuring Guthrie’s wondrous, muted, airy interpretation of Tim Buckley’s playing on the original—that he created his own similar sound with composer Angelo Badalamenti, forever replacing the Hollywood dream sequences’ proclivity for plinky harps. But not even Lynch could capture the lush, multi-layered textures that the guitarist creates with his main gig, ethereal art-rockers Cocteau Twins. The soundscapes are so layered that, in 1996, Guthrie described them best: “like an onion.”

Most Heroic Moment: The swirling, dense, onion-like backdrop for Cocteau Twins’ 1990 album opener “Cherry-Coloured Funk.” K.G. ▣

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