After five albums, Scottish dream pop darlings Cocteau Twins found something they never expected their blissful, ambiguous, ethereal pop songs to deliver…

Commercial success.

If Cocteau Twins ever had dreams of pop superstardom, they took a strange route to get there. While there’s an undeniable catchiness to their signature sound, there aren’t many singalong choruses—hell, there are hardly many real lyrics, Elizabeth Fraser instead writing in a tonal gibberish that merely sounded like words. Even where she does use real words, they’re sung like a sort of lyrical Rorschach test.

But somehow, combining this alyrical songwriting with hypnotic pop beats and atmospheric guitars became a winning formula (and as the nearly percussionless Victorialand proved, those beats were optional). 1988’s Blue Bell Knoll managed to find success overseas, becoming the first of their records to be distributed in the US.

It wasn’t just a fluke: Heaven or Las Vegas ended up peaking at number 99 on the Billboard 200. And that was without watering down their formula.

You’d think that the appeal of commercial success would encourage them to tighten things up and aim closer to the middle of the road, and there are bits of that. Fraser’s voice is a little higher in the mix, a few English words are clearly audible. But for the most part Heaven or Las Vegas is just as amorphous and vague as Blue Bell Knoll or Treasure.

The record opens with “Cherry-coloured Funk,” which may be the most straightforward song in the group’s catalogue. “Pitch The Baby” finds Fraser meditating on her newfound motherhood over a funk-tinged bass riff and heavily-phased guitar. The title track slows things down a little for a delightful midtempo track that could sound like an anthem if you could actually understand what they’re singing.

“I Wear Your Ring” verges on new age, driven by a cascading vocal melody sung over crystalline keyboards and hand percussion. The biggest surprise on the record is the closing track, “Frou-frou Foxes in Midsummer,” which opens as a minor-key piano ballad (with some gnarly electric guitar feedback!) and blooms into a major key wall of noise in the chorus.

Overall, Heaven or Las Vegas is a conglomeration of everything Cocteau Twins did well. While their entire career has been treated as a textbook for hundreds of dream pop bands, this record is the most concise explanation as to why. A blissful pop record from a band that detach themselves from reality while retaining their universal appeal.