Cocteau Twins’ Simon Raymonde on ‘Heaven or Las Vegas’ (which just turned 30)

• By Bill Pearis
• Brooklyn Vegan
• 17-Sep 2020

Cocteau Twins’ sixth album, ‘Heaven or Las Vegas,’ came out on September 17, 1990.

A record that’s just gotten better over the last 30 years, it’s where the group took their signature sound—Robin Guthrie’s intricately woven, heavily treated guitars paired with Elizabeth Fraser’s elastic, unreal, heavenly voice—and brought it to the strongest batch of songs of their career. “Iceblink Luck,” “Pitch the Baby,” and the title track all approached pop, on their terms, while “Fifty-Fifty Clown,” “I Wear Your Ring,” “Wolf in Breast” and the magisterial closer “Frou-frou Foxes in Midsummer Fires” brought their gothy grandeur to spectacular new heights. Simon Raymonde was contributing as much piano as bass this time around; Guthrie created sounds you didn’t know guitars could produce; and Fraser’s delivery was downright in intelligible for the first time in years but no less otherworldly. It all made for a beautiful web that cannot be pulled apart, like the blur of colors found on the album’s artwork.

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