Deeper and down
Instrumentals from former Cocteau Twin head for still waters. By Victoria Segal.
Robin Guthrie ★★★ Pearldiving SOLEIL APRÈS MINUIT. CD/DL
“EVERYONE WHO listened to the Cocteau Twins would hear something else in their head or see different pictures or have their own interpretation,” said Robin Guthrie in a 2006 interview, trying to explain the difference between his former band and their more literal songwriting contemporaries – “Morrissey droning away with some story,” for example. Since the Cocteau Twins split in 1997, the guitarist has largely continued to resist the concrete world, his instrumental music opening up emotional spaces without putting in too many hard boundaries or supporting walls.
Pearldiving, Guthrie’s first solo instrumental record since 2012’s Fortune, was recorded in a time of deceptive stillness. There was no travel – previously a key inspiration for him – but there was still turbulence. In 1986, Guthrie – along with his then-bandmates Elizabeth Fraser and Simon Raymonde – united with composer Harold Budd on the beautiful
The Moon And The Melodies. From 2005’s soundtrack for Gregg Araki’s disembodied drama Mysterious Skin, Guthrie and Budd became semi-regular collaborators. Their final project, Another Flower, was released in December 2020, just days before Budd’s death from complications of Covid at the age of 84.
In response, Robin
Guthrie felt the need to break down and rebuild his recording studio in Brittany before making Pearldiving. That reconstruction does not seem to have triggered any kind of cataclysmic rupture, however: this music – limpid, cleanedged, streamlined – feels more like a testament to core values, a test of the process to see what endures, what remains. Initially, it feels as if some of the grit in the shell has been filtered out, contemplative opener Ivy or Oceanaire’s lazy calm a little diffuse and frondy, any tension present only in homeopathic quantities.
Yet beneath the appealing prettiness lies a slow-release drama, measured out with ink-dropper precision by a musician who knows exactly what he is doing. The beachy, sunset Ouestern has the slight uncanniness that comes with synthesized sound-stage landscapes, its orange glow not quite found in nature. The Amber Room and Euphemia’s light piano, meanwhile, are buffeted by a low Vangelis undertow, like a feather over a vent. Those unseen forces move in tighter On The Trail Of Grace or Les Amourettes, falling away into ominous echo at the edges. Castaway, as close as the record comes to urgency, underlines this slightly precarious air, the sound of somebody moving forward, yes, but with eyes fixed on the path and not at the darkness off to the sides.
This is not new ground, but even if a master of atmosphere like Guthrie could do this in his sleep, it never feels as if he is. Pearldiving still tries to break the surface, make a ripple, cause a quiet stir, coming back up with handfuls of different pictures for whoever’s listening.