Cocteau Twins - Heaven Or Las Vegas (1990)

1990 fut vraiment une belle année pour la musique (celle que j'aime en tous cas).

J'ai déjà parlé de The Only One I Know de The Charlatans et de World in Motion de New Order mais là, c'est du très lourd puisque c'est l'album Heaven Or Las Vegas des Cocteau Twins qui fête ses 30 ans !!!

Pour les hérétiques qui ne connaitraient pas encore les Cocteau Twins, il s'agit d'un groupe écossais, formé en 1979 et séparé en 1997, formé de Liz Fraser (chant), Robin Guthrie (guitare, batterie) et Simon Raymonde (multi-instrumentiste).

Heaven Or Las Vegas est leur sixième album et plus gros succès commercial. C'est aussi et surtout l'album avec lequel je les ai connus, enfin presque puisque je l'ai acquis après les avoir vus en live en accompagnant ma sœur à leur concert salle Poirel à Nancy en 1990 (dans le cadre du Nancy Jazz Pulsations).

Et ce n'est rien de dire que ce fut un choc et aussi mes premiers pas dans le monde merveilleux de la dreampop et du shoegaze.

Bref, j'ai acheté le CD (et aussi plus tard le vinyle d'ailleurs réédité récemment) et je l'ai énormément écouté à l'époque et c'est un des albums dont je ne me lasse pas et que j'écoute régulièrement.

Pourtant, la glossolalie des paroles ne rend pas la mémorisation des morceaux faciles mais c'est aussi l'une des caractéristiques du groupe, comme la musique éthérée ou la voix de Liz Fraser.

Cette dernière a d'ailleurs contribué au succès du célèbre Teardrop de Massive Attack.

Mais revenons à Heaven Or Las Vegas qui fait quand même partie des 1001 albums qu'il faut avoir écoutés dans sa vie, excusez du peu !!!
Cet album confirme aussi le virage pris avec le précédent, Blue Bell Knoll vers une musique un peu plus accessible, puisque le groupe était à l'origine influencé par Joy Division et Siouxsie and the Banshees. et ça donnait ça (Wax And Wane de de l'album Garlands paru en 1982) :

A côté, le single de Heaven Or Las Vegas, Iceblink Luck fait presque mainstream !!!

Bon, je pourrais citer tous les morceaux de l'album tant je les trouve excellents mais je ne pense pas être très objectif.

Aussi, autant donner la parole à Simon Raymonde pour parler de l'album (désolé, c'est en anglais) :

I would never say it was a masterpiece. We always wanted to be better than before and it was no different after this. But maybe things were never quite the same after this album but that’s all stuff that’s nowt to do with da music! Life stuff. We were proud of it!
[was it fav album to make?] Probably just yes. It was partly joyous (new baby new studio new gear etc) and partly dark (drugs, death, drink) and that’s maybe why it works as a complete album. It’s got the light and the dark side. The ecstasy and the agony.
[do you know all the lyrics?] Haha. I did.
Cherry-coloured funk
It’s just all guitars and bass my friend. And voice. Not a sausage more.
I think the minute robin and I finished the music for this piece, we KNEW it was special. We kinda improvised our music out of nothing, and if nothing was happening, we would go bowling...but thankfully not so often during this record.
One thing I can tell you is The Weeknd sampled "Cherry-Coloured Funk" for his song "The Knowing" from House of Balloons (2011), which is very lovely of him
Pitch The Baby
beats baby...hip hop.. one that was fairly obviously inspired by the birth of Lucy Belle. Robin should take all the credit for the musical part of this song. I actually didnt like it that much at the time, but grew to realise the error of this thinking
Pitch the baby red tape mix
Don’t remember this at all. Pretty much a one off by the look of it. Never heard of red mag.
no remixes, barely no edits and never any spare tracks. WE wrote ten and then we stopped.
Fifty-Fifty Clown
one of my all time favourites. NO SYNTHS were used! We started with the drums as usual and we'd just gotten some new bit of rack gear (effects) and while robin was messing about with it i plugged a guitar into it so he could fiddle, and all of a sudden it started to sound gorgeous and i got this melody (the one that sounds like a synth), then he added more guitars etc and we adored it as an instrumental but when Liz added her vocals it was just divine.
Robin got a beat going. He’d bought a new bit of rack gear and he was fiddling with it while I played the guitar to help him mess with the sound. The melody came out of that and then we built it from there. Love this one to this day. Fresh and different. Took a couple of hours...
prince sampled this...like THE Prince!
„Love...thy will be done”. He wrote it for Martika and it’s just about audible in that version but while this remained in his vault till his death his own version was later released and it’s much more obvious.
Heaven Or Las Vegas
The title song was CLASSIC Elizabeth wasn't it. Her backing vocals are SOO UNDERRATED ...we knew the music was pretty good but when she came in and laid down that first vocal, oh man...the record is quite short like all of ours and only 10 songs, I am turning the vinyl now.
Robin was the mix king. A real sonic master. Before automation and such it was v different to how it is now. This was in our 28th year on earth. People in creative work often excel in this period of their life. I think we all brought our A game.
I Wear Your Ring
OK Side 2 starts with one of my fave ever Cocteau Twins songs I Wear Your Ring. still makes me cry like a baby this one. Wrote the music for this one, and froufrou foxes in the days following my father’s death But Robin’s drums, guitar additions and of course Liz’s singing make it so emotional. At 2.00 before the big key change there is this melody that sounds like it’s a French horn or an oboe. I can’t remember where it came from, cos we didn’t have any French horns but I love it so
I was so excited by the chords I’d created for the song the bass part just wrote itself. Turn it up loud and play along and the notes just fall into place. Robin was a maestro in the control room and it felt very natural and easy writing together during this LP.
Most people think we used synths all the time but we didn't. Robin just had a genius for sound and textures with guitars. I Wear Your Ring is based around a keyboard tho ; )
Fotzepolitic
For a song title that literally translates to ‘Cunt politics’ it sure is a jaunty little piece of music.
Wolf In The Breast
defo one of my fave pieces.Also makes me cry a lot. Raymonde and Guthrie in classic bass and guitar combo. I like the ones where I play two bass lines like this. This kinda song writes itself. And Fraser at her ecstatic best looking back on the birth of her first daughter. “Laughing on our bed, pretending us newly wed, especially when our angel unleashed that head-I feel perpetual". AMAZING amazing. Still can't believe we did some of this stuff.
[regarding quoted lyrics] It’s funny -I thought everyone would know those. That’s what I’ve always heard them as. I may be miles off ; )
[regarding the bridge] Yeah particularly love that too. Again sometimes these moments just happen through Synchronicity. It took us a while to get that kinda telepathy going from when I joined in 84 but by 1990 it was becoming special. Could feel it.
Road, river and rail.
This one is melancholy and again the classic bass and guitar writing combo. After Liz recorded her amazing vocals, we referred to it as Rod, river and reel. 'Through Paris, Brixton.' (In my head that’s one of the phrases. I might be wrong though. Just my interpretation) These little gems Elizabeth left us are all there. Even if you aren't sure what all the words are you still sing along and have a journey of expression and interaction that is so beautiful. she is beyond compound
Frou-Frou Foxes In Midsummer Fire
The first day back to studio after my Dad's’s funeral, I was the only one there for a bit, and sat playing the piano. After an hour or so, I had something that I was keeping returning to. (the music for Frou-Frou Foxes In Midsummer Fires) Robin walked in and listened quietly. “Don’t stop” he said walking straight to the Akai MPC60 and getting his magic beats working. After laying the piano and drums down, we added his lovely textured guitars I think he also did the bass on this one as I was probably a bit emotionally drained from the piano. Hard to listen to now (he says with tears streaming down the face) but v proud of us for doing it.
B sides - Dials, Mizake the Mizan, Watchlar
What’s odd about Cocteau Twins is that cos we only wrote 10 songs for each lp we would always have to write b sides after. And they’d often be really good maybe good enough for the LP but too late to fit on. Try listening to Watchlar.That’s one of those /it’s on the b-side of Iceblink Luck

 

Encore une petite remarque pour dire que I Wear Your Ring s'est aussi retrouvée sur l'excellente compilation Un Printemps 91 des Inrockuptibles dont je recommande aussi grandement l'écoute car c'est vraiment que du bon.

Bref, c'est vraiment un album majeur d'un groupe qui ne l'est pas moins et qui a fortement influencé toute une génération.

Je ne peux que vous encourager à l'écouter et/ou le réécouter (moi, ça m'a même donné envie de me refaire leur discographie).