“Cocteau Twins’ Robin Guthrie on the ‘Pain’ (and Gain) of Remastering This ’80s Classic”
- By Charles Moss
- SPIN
- 22-Aug 2024
On August 23, The Moon and the Melodies will be available on vinyl for the first time since 1986. Just don’t tell Robin Guthrie it sounds better on cassette.
Robin Guthrie is in what appears to be his kitchen, a Welsh dresser against the light-blue wall behind him, and a rustic-style table with a collection of odds to his right. His cozy, modest home is in Finistère, France, the westernmost point of Brittany. Finistère is derived from the Latin term “finis terrae,” which means “end of the earth.” And that’s fine by him. He likes the reclusiveness of it all.
“What are you doing? Is this like an interview? What is it? What’s your vibe?” Guthrie asks me in his thick Scottish accent.
He’s been doing rounds of interviews to promote the upcoming vinyl reissue of the band’s 1986 album, The Moon and the Melodies, and I can tell he’d much rather be doing something else. But Guthrie is very cordial and jokes around a bit. He’s wearing an old black T-shirt with “Cuba” emblazoned on the front and plastic-framed glasses that hover between his white beard and thinning hair. I tell him my purpose for the interview and ask him why he felt now was a good time to do a repressing of The Moon and the Melodies.
“I didn’t really have any need to listen to that record ever again in my life,” Guthrie says. “but it comes around because it’s part of the catalog. And I’d never looked at it in terms of remastering… just, there seems to be somewhat of a wave of people sort of discovering Cocteau Twins now after all this time.”
To be fair, this record wasn’t originally released under the group’s moniker. A collaboration with American minimalist composer Harold Budd, the album was released under the names of each contributor: Guthrie, Elizabeth Fraser, and Simon Raymonde of the Cocteau Twins, and Budd. But in the decades since its initial release, The Moon and the Melodies is now considered part of the Cocteau Twins catalog, and one of the band’s best.
Guthrie goes on for a bit, and then asks me, “What do you know about my history?”
What we don’t go into detail about, but what I assume he’s hinting at, is his relationship with Fraser.
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