As long as I’ve been a fan, Victorialand has been my favorite Cocteau Twins record. It’s an odd moment in their discography to be sure: it was the only record created solely by founders Elizabeth Fraser and Robin Guthrie, and it is devoid of any sort of percussion. Instead of their ubiquitous drum machines, they lean more fully into atmospheric washes and endless stretches of echo. My only complaint with it is that it’s only thirty-three minutes long, and that I need more of that version of the band.
There’s some good news there. Because even though Victorialand is the only outright ambient entry in their main catalogue, it does have a fine companion. Later that year, the members of Cocteau Twins—credited by name on the jacket—joined with minimalist composer Harold Budd to create The Moon & The Melodies. And while the name “Cocteau Twins” never actually appears anywhere on the packaging, it’s still very much in the Twins’ wheelhouse.
The genesis of the project is a mystery lost to time. In the 80s, Harold said that his publisher introduced him to the Twins after they called asking permission to cover one of his songs. Guthrie and Simon Raymonde remember it as part of a Channel 4 film project that was never completed. But the context is hardly important, as the songs often feel like they simply emerged from the white noise of the universe.
There’s definitely a greater sense of atmosphere, but it’s not anything unusual against the rest of their work. Besides the presence of Budd’s piano, you might not guess the presence of another collaborator for much of the record. He does take the band further away from the need of traditional song structures—four of the eight tracks are purely instrumental—but it’s hardly far enough to make them unrecognizable.
Even the most abstract tracks just feel like an extension of Victorialand’s softness. “The Ghost Has No Home” for instance feels like the band letting the intro to “Lazy Calm” bloom out to a seven-minute track (it even features Richard Thomas, who also played the saxophone on “Lazy Calm”). You can practically hear Fraser’s effervescent, incoherent lilting over “Bloody and Blunt.”
The more song-oriented tracks are pure Cocteau Twins goodness. “She Will Destroy You” could easily fit on any album between Treasure and Heaven or Las Vegas. “Sea, Swallow Me” is even their second-most streamed song on Spotify, and unlike most collaborative track, it’s a fine sampling of their usual fare.
Most importantly though, The Moon & The Melodies is a gorgeous document of the self-perpetuating creative energy of Cocteau Twins’ most fulfilling period. The experiments here cast long shadows on the records to come, even on their most immediate releases. The glistening textures that underlined Blue Bell Knoll and Heaven or Las Vegas rose from the primordial soup of the ambient half of this record.
Admittedly, I’ve not listened to this record very much before ordering the repress last week. I think I’ve mentioned before that one of my methods of self-control in record buying is that if a vinyl edition of a record is outrageously expensive, I just don’t listen to it. That has been the case for The Moon & The Melodies for over a decade now. Now that 4AD has finally reissued it (for the first time since 1986, for some reason), the gaping hole in my Cocteau Twins collection is finally filled.