Bleep

Long before the sharp and polished sound worlds of Heaven Or Las Vegas, Milk & Kisses, and Four Calendar Café, the seeds of Cocteau Twins’ (and we don’t use this word lightly) ethereal craft were long sown on their 1982 debut Garlands. This was post-punk in the austere vein of Joy Division and the burgeoning goth movement, the critics at the time assured themselves, but ultimately descriptors — ‘dreamy’, ‘amniotic’, ‘icy’ — overlooked a vital inventiveness in the dissonant energies of ‘Blood Bitch’ and ‘Wax And Wane’, and ‘Shallow Then Halo’. Usually overlooked in their overall catalogue, Garlands shows that Cocteau Twins were a fully-formed project all along.