COCTEAU TWINS 黑胶唱片和CD

Review: ***B-STOCK: Sleeve damaged but otherwise in excellent condition***


Four Calendar Cafe is a latter-day LP from dream pop pioneers Cocteau Twins, now reissued by their home stretch 4AD (though it first appeared as a defection to Dutch label Fontana). Though it isn't an album of high priority in the average Cocteau canon, this very fact proves that the average Cocteau enjoyer can be differentiated from the patrician cream. That's all due to the fact that Four-Calendar Cafe oozes a maturity that only a seventh full-length album could muster, infamously swerving away from the ambient indeterminacy of their prior albums and veering into greater accessibility and popcraft, with the likes of 'Evangeline' and 'Bluebeard' garnering the band moderate success in the charts.

Review: When Cocteau Twins released Milk & Kisses in 1996, it wasn't presented as their last album. It was only two years later when they went to record a follow-up they decided to call it a day. Despite that, it was actually the smoothest album to record after the dust has settled from interpersonal relationship breakups, and the harmony between the band shines through in these beautifully strange, strangely beautiful slices of mid-90s indie pop. Paying tribute to Jeff Buckley on 'Rilkean Heart', it's a true document of the time and sounds like the era packaged up on an album, now remastered and reissued via Proper.