Cocteau Twins - Cherry Coloured Funk

"You steam a lens stable eyes and glass."

Album: Heaven or Las Vegas [6th album]
Recorded: London, England
Genre: Dream Pop
Album Release: September 17th 1990
Length: 3:12
Producer: Cocteau Twins
Vocalist: Elizabeth Fraser [age 27]
Label: 4AD Records

Official Audio

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Credits

Details

• This is the bands second and final release for 4AD Records. The bands relationship with their label soured due to, at least in part, guitarist Robin Guthrie's addictions to alcohol and cocaine.
  
  
• Singer Elizabeth Fraser and Robin Guthrie were in a long term relationship that would end in 1993. They had two daughters, the first of whom was born a year before the release of 'Heaven or Las Vegas'. The couple were struggling when they started the album and the combined strain of recording and family life added to their difficulties.
  
  The album was recorded while two of the bands three members were breaking up with each other. Things must have been tense in the studio. At the same time the third Cocteau Twin, Simon Raymonde, was grieving the death of his father. Raymonde wrote the song 'Frou-Frou Foxes in Midsummer Spires' the day after hearing the grim news. Frou-frou was eighties slang for fancy.
  
  So 'Heaven or Las Vegas' is an album made amidst the duality of birth and death and hope and grief which is reflected in the title. Heaven, the ultimate joy, or Las Vegas, the city of sin. Both have bright lights but is it everything you ever dreamed of or has it left you broke and out of luck? Even though Frasers and Guthries relationship was ending they brought new life into the world. Even though Raymonde was grieving he created brilliant music. The album is beautiful as well as haunting in an interesting way that demands at least one listen.
  
  
• “One of the things that’s a stand-out in my memory was a little party we had just at the end, when all the mixing had been done and it had been sequenced. There was a whole bunch of our mates over and part of you is just looking at how they’re reacting. What’s the worst thing in the world? You’re playing somebody a new song and twenty seconds into it they start talking, about themselves, usually. Well, this was 40 minutes of just silence and mouths open. That, for me, was a very powerful moment. It was like, whoa, it’s a goodie.” (Robin Guthrie)

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