Four-calendar Café/ Milk & Kisses (reissues, 1993, 1996)

8/10, 7/10 Goodbye 4AD, hello break-up angst, but the melodic majesty endures.

TT was received at the time with bewilderment and foreboding akin to that which might be prompted by the ravens eeing the Tower of London: Cocteau Twins leaving 4AD. It wasn’t just that the Cocteaus had, more than any other act, epitomised 4AD’S singular and in uential aesthetic, it was that they appeared on the verge of an unlikely accession to genuine superstardom. 1990’s Heaven Or Las Vegas had been widely, and correctly, hailed as a classic. The accompanying US tour had ƒlled ballrooms, theatres and – in a booking which seemed both hilariously incongruous yet weirdly apposite, given the album’s dazzle and shimmer and indeed title – the Aladdin Hotel in Vegas itself (wedding venue of Elvis and Priscilla Presley, among much else).

Behind the scenes, however, things were unravelling. The Cocteaus’ relationship with 4AD had become strained, as had the relationship between guitarist Robin Guthrie and singer

Elizabeth Fraser. Unhelpful quantities of drugs were being consumed. The Cocteaus were dumped by 4AD in 1991, and Guthrie and Fraser split not long a”er. But the group somehow held together and signed to Fontana, for whom the Cocteaus made these two albums, now reissued – and/or welcomed home – in 140g vinyl by 4AD (in the US, at least; everywhere else we get them courtesy of Proper and UMR).

There was clearly every reason why 1993’s Four-calendar Café could/should have been a disappointment at best, a disaster at worst: ƒrst major-label album, follow-up to a masterpiece, band barely on speaking terms, add cocaine, await calamity. But against these considerable odds, Four-calendar Café is a marvel. For all the upheaval attending its creation, it sounds a pretty natural successor to Heaven Or Las Vegas, the Cocteaus apparently continuing to realise that they could stay just as pretty while becoming less opaque. It’s riddled with tunes that nobody’s milkman would have dišculty whistling, conveying Fraser’s most audible and least mistakable lyrics to date (on the gorgeous trundle of “Bluebeard”, which sounds about as close as the Cocteaus were ever likely to

Cocteau Twins: (l–r) Simon Raymonde, Liz Fraser, Robin Guthrie