Cocteau Twins - Treasure
Written by Moti Kupfer
Release date - 01.11.1984
It is midnight as I sit down to write, and the cold, damp air takes over every square meter of the darkness outside. It seems the right time to sit down and write about music like that of "Cocteau Twins", whose third studio album, "Treasure", was released on November 1, 1984.
The end of 1984 was especially creative for 4AD, the label Ivo Watts-Russell had founded four years earlier. On October 1, 1984, the wonderful, melancholic album "It'll End in Tears" by the collective "This Mortal Coil" was released. One of its highlights was Elizabeth Fraser's airy cover of Tim Buckley's "Song to the Siren".
Besides Elizabeth Fraser, the album featured her bandmate, guitarist Robin Guthrie, and bassist Simon Raymonde. Guthrie and Fraser met Raymonde during the recording sessions, a shared sense of direction formed between them, and soon afterwards he joined "Cocteau Twins".
Although he was a new member of the band, Raymonde claimed that "Treasure" was made in a rush, and saw it as an unfinished album: "We spent a month making the album, and because we had never spent proper time together, we were still getting to know each other. We had only been friends for a short while, we recorded a lot of material and then the album came out. It feels like an unfinished record, and it's our worst album by a mile."
The music made by "Cocteau Twins" is a great example of how popular music can be created without following the usual song structures, relying instead on instrumental and vocal textures to build a mood.
The band's sonic textures are instantly recognizable: the delay effects on Robin Guthrie's guitars, the drum machines high in the mix and, above all, of course, the heavenly voice of Elizabeth Fraser. Guthrie described the music as impressionistic, and Robert Smith of "The Cure" said that "Treasure" was the album he listened to while getting ready for his wedding, because it was the most romantic sound he had ever heard.
Ahead of the third album, Ivo Watts-Russell suggested bringing in Brian Eno as producer, together with his partner Daniel Lanois. Eno, who had just finished recording "The Unforgettable Fire" by "U2" (read our review), met with the band and quickly realized he was redundant as a producer. He told them: "I'm really flattered that you asked, but I never had the courage to use the amount of reverb that you used on "Head Over Heels"! You don't need a producer, you know exactly how your music is supposed to sound, and you should do it yourselves."
Much has been said about the meaning of the lyrics on this album, or the lack of it. Not many realize that this was a perfect case of necessity being the mother of invention. Ivo recalled a phone call he received from Robin Guthrie: "You've got to come up and help, Liz has got no words. She's completely dried up. I went up and sat with her, with a dictionary, and wrote some poetry. I wasn't seriously suggesting lyrics, but I tried to kick-start the process. But it didn't work out the way she wanted, and there, for the first time, Liz started using words more phonetically than lyrically."
Guthrie had another explanation: "Liz never liked being criticized, and compliments embarrassed her just as much, and she had less confidence in what she was writing. So she started to disguise what she wrote, or to split the words in the wrong places."
An important element of the album is the sound Robin Guthrie managed to get out of the EMU Drumulator drum machine. The machine had been released a year before the album was recorded and was quickly adopted by Howard Jones on his album "Human's Lib" (1984). Guthrie installed the Rock Drums sound chip to get those bombastic drum sounds, and almost every song on the album carries the machine's distinctive sound.
Some of the song titles on the album are taken from mythology, among them female figures such as Persephone (the goddess of the underworld in Greek mythology) and Pandora (also from Greek mythology, the woman created by Zeus, king of the gods, as a punishment for mankind for the theft of fire; Pandora, despite the prohibition, opened the box and released despair and sorrow into the world), as well as the Lorelei (from German legend, the maiden who sat on a rock and sang so alluringly that sailors and fishermen were mesmerized by her, failing to notice the dangerous rocks of the Rhine, and their boats were smashed to pieces). With some humor, the album opens with "Ivo", a song dedicated to the head of the 4AD record label, Ivo Watts-Russell.
Contrary to the opinion of the musicians who made it, "Treasure" is undoubtedly one of the band's most interesting albums. It has a quality that pulls you into the music and carries you off to dreamy, cool landscapes of heavenly sound, with charming gibberish words coming from the angelic voice of Elizabeth Fraser.
The album reached number 29 on the UK Albums Chart, becoming the band's first album in the UK Top 40, where it stayed for eight weeks.
For Listening: Spotify, Apple Music
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