It's New to Me: Victorialand by the Cocteau Twins (1986)

Photo from Guilford College's annual The Quaker, 1961

Whoa - it's been over a month since I did an "It's New to Me" post. How did that happen? It's not because I've stopped buying old albums. Just last week I picked up two old Cocteau Twins records in my continuing quest to understand one of the most unique bands in pop history. I bought Victorialand (1986) and Blue Bell Knoll (1988), and, predictably, the latter album was much more accessible. However, Victorialand is the more interesting album of the two, and I'm liking it more and more as I spend time with it.

In 1986, the Cocteau Twins had (appropriately) been reduced to just two members, guitarist Robin Guthrie and vocalist Liz Fraser. As a result, it was only natural to make a different kind of record, with spare, atmospheric guitar-and-vocals arrangements. Even if you don't know that Victorialand is a region of Antarctica, there are enough hints in the album's song titles to reveal that album's arctic/antarctic theme. This theme is never expressed lyrically, of course, because of Fraser's inability to sing a comprehensible English phrase, but the album's arrangements are pure permafrost and twilight. The album has been described as ambient or even "new age", probably because of the minimalist washes of the album's opening track, "Lazy Calm". Calling it "new age" is just insulting, really, and it's even unfair to call the album's first track ambient - it opens with a three-minute instrumental section, consisting solely of washes of heavily treated guitar and a moaning saxophone, but the song's second half has a distinct vocal melody, pushing it from "ambient" into the more accurate category of "ambient-pop".

Can we talk about the saxophone for a minute? Played by guest musician Richard Thomas of dub band Dif Juz, the sax is the single weakest component on this album - it's just way too '80s-sounding on an album that otherwise exists outside of normal time and space. Luckily, it only pops up on the opening and closing tracks (the album's most ambient moments), and Thomas redeems himself by playing a cool tabla rhythm on "Feet-Like Fins", one of the album's strongest tracks. The album is most engaging when Fraser's vocals are focused into some kind of concise melody, as on that track and the poppy "Fluffy Tufts". The middle of Victorialand loses me a little - my attention wanders for a while, but the album's best track, "Little Spacey", always snaps my focus back to the music. It's a peppy number with a sing-song melody from Fraser, but it never strays too far from the album's cohesive sound.

One music writer described Victorialand as "cocaine candyfloss", and it's an apt phrase for this kind of sweet and dreamy pop music. It's a little too unfocused to hit me just right, though - I think I need to finally break down and buy the Cocteaus' (supposedly) two best albums, Treasure and Heaven or Las Vegas. I'm certain they'll live up to the hype, and I've enjoyed sampling some of their other work as an introduction before getting to the really good stuff.

"Little Spacey" by the Cocteau Twins