Garlands was the Cocteau's debut release that sent shock waves through the alternative circuit. Unlike many other debut albums this is not a release to forget and ignore. Slightly primitive at times, but rich in quality these eight songs (the other songs were added later to the CD-release) with their remarkable guitar effects and Liz's excellent vocals stunned most of those who cared to listen at the time.

The connection throughout the eight original Garlands songs is the very specific sound of the guitar, accompanied by simple, yet very effective percussion patterns. The words are often hard to understand, if at all, something CT fans learned to get used to as later releases featured even less comprehensible lyrics. Three songs ( Blind Dumb Deaf, Shallow Then Halo, Grail Overfloweth) are in three time, something which was to be a regular feature of the Twins, but which is still rather an uncommon one throughout rock music (on the three time page you'll find a number of others ).

Robin's guitar sound has to be heard rather then described, since language falls way short of giving an accurate description. Perhaps "growling" comes closest. The bass lines were played by Will Heggie, who was to leave the band before too long. The percussion is obviously generated by a drum machine, which might have lead to rather mechanically sounding background noises, but in fact in combination with the guitar generates a mystical and almost sinister sound. The tapestry is woven to completion by the vocals, which are so mature it is hard to believe this is really Elizabeth Fraser's debut album as well.

The CD features six more tracks, four of which were recorded at a John Peel session in January 1983, also included on the BBC Sessions double CD. Of these, Blind Dumb Deaf sounds nearly identical to the earlier track, while quite a different version of Hazel also appears on the Peppermint Pig EP. These six tracks seamlessly complete a marvellous CD which will give you a musical feast of just under an hour.

Blood Bitch

Although the title suggests something really dramatic this track is really a rather gentle song - the only dramatic aspect perhaps being that this is actually the first track of the first album of what was to be a dramatically successful career.

The song starts out with a lengthy instrumental bit, featuring the characteristic distorted guitar, a few drum beats and a very prominent bass. A guitar based theme is repeated several times, but after almost a minute and a half, just when the song seems to remain an instrumental one, Liz starts out her vocal contributions. On this track these remain rather limited, because the song is very much dominated by guitars. Still she lets go of the occasional vibrato, as if to show that even with limited opportunity there is still room for something special.

The guitar soon takes over again as the leading force, reaching even higher levels of distortion, and eventually dying away very slowly during a lengthy fade-out.

Blood Bitch as a composition is rather characteristic for the Cocteau Twins in that there is no obvious or easily repeated theme, and no chorus. The song apparently is much more about atmosphere rather than melody. This was to be quite a common phenomenon, and one shared on this album for instance with But I'm Not and The Hollow Men. It's just one of those things that make the Twins' music 'difficult'. But there is too much 'easy' music around already.

Wax And Wane

Remarkably upbeat Wax And Wane is easily the liveliest track in the otherwise mostly gloomy landscape of Garlands. Nowhere else on the album will you find such ultraquick rhythms as in this song.

Despite its merry character Wax And Wane is still very much a song from the Garlands era. The percussion, dynamic as it is, still sounds a bit mechanical (no cymbals for instance). Note also how the first minute is entirely without vocals - a feature they wouldn't repeat often later in their career. When Liz actually starts singing she does so with great enthusiasm, using tremolo's to add some extra emotion - but again note how there are no overdubs. Finally there is the extraordinary prominence of the bass, close to taking over the leading role from the guitar.

But the most enchanting feature of Wax And Wane is its remarkable freshness. This is a song that simply invites us to have fun, to enjoy. Liz sounds so young, so happy, so dedicated. The creative long drawn out guitar textures interact so marvellously with the bass rhythms, and at times you'd swear even the drum machine is having a party. The band would go on to create many more highly optimistic tracks, but on Garlands this song is like a brightly shining star in an otherwise fairly murky sky.

The band played a very similar version at their first BBC Session.

A remixed version of this song was included on The Pink Opaque.

But I'm Not

With its deceptively simple combination of instrumental and vocal parts against a steady rhythm But I'm Not may sound as just a typical Garlands track. But the scheme of the song is quite interesting and tells us how the band were beginning to redefine how to use their creative resources at the time.

With Liz only just starting to find out her real vocal potential Robin's guitars take much of the limelight on Garlands. In But I'm Not however the emphasis is much more balanced between the two of them. With great regularity instrumental and vocal parts are alternating. Robin found a great riff somewhere, which is really defining the song, and keeps going virtually from beginning to end. A darkly growling bass, given extra volume during some of the instrumental parts, tugs the song towards more sombre territories. But the abundance of vocal parts ensure a far more relaxed atmosphere. Liz is actually managing to do a verse and a chorus, which is also less usual in the context of this album. The chorus in particular has a very pleasing melody and gives the song an even lighter nature.

On the one hand But I'm Not is quite representative for the era it was created, but the slight shift from instrumental domination to a more vocal oriented approach is like seeing the band's evolution in a nutshell. And at just over two and a half minutes this track is also the most compact example of what the Twins were trying to achieve on their debut album.

Blind Dumb Deaf

Some tunes sound so simple that it seems impossible they were ever composed - they were just there from the beginning of times, waiting for someone to pick them up and put them on a record. Blind Dumb Deaf is such a song. It has a theme so straightforward that you wonder why nobody ever thought of it before.

On this great track we find that the guitar keeps on playing the same notes over and over and over again. For the length of the entire track, which is just under four minutes, it never misses a beat. Sounds boring? It isn't. Most themes can not bear such repetition but this one can. And while the guitar provides us with a steady background the bass plays many loops and variations and creates ever more complex patterns as the song progresses. The band have the classical roles of bass and guitar cunningly reversed!

Liz' complements it all with an extremely simple chorus: the words Blind Dumb Deaf occur often and add to the song's apparent simplicity. But on listening more closely we appreciate the first signs of vocal overdub and the use of echo, which were to become such trademarks on later albums.

For once then we encounter a Cocteaus' song easy to remember. It might still be too good a song to top the charts, but the band convincingly show they can write an addictive tune if they want to.

A slightly different version was recorded during a John Peel session, also included on (most versions of) this CD.

Shallow Then Halo

As one of the lighter tracks from Garlands Shallow Then Halo still carries sufficient amounts of darkness to fit in well with the rest of the album. But there are also lots of indications that the band were destined to show much greater diversity.

It all starts out simple enough. A steady rhythm, a dark bass guitar, Liz producing a few rather desolate vocals. It's only after a minute or so that Robin joins in on guitar. So far it's all very much standard Garlands stuff. Fairly straightforward, and a bit gloomy. Pretty good, but not particularly striking yet.

The chorus, featuring a catchy, pleasant melody, introduces a much louder guitar, but things starts livening up quite a bit. Liz sounds much more dynamic - frequently allowing her voice to break towards the end of her lines. An instrumental part with heavily distorted guitars is followed by a few sound effects, but already Liz can hardly wait to take over again, throwing in a few loose phrases before bursting out into the chorus again. And as the song progresses she shows ever growing empathy and sings with an enthusiasm rarely found elsewhere on the album. Overdubs and stereo effects enhance her performance even further and Robin's guitar goes though great pains and distortions to stay on a par with her newly found energy. Towards the end Liz begins to sound truly merry, having a really good time. The band ends up sounding like having a party - enjoying themselves thoroughly, a far cry from the much darker introduction.

In a way the second half of this enchanting song already shows many features such as overdubs, lively vocals and attractive melodies, that would make Head Over Heels such a shining example of creative briliance. So for those with an ear for musical detail this song reads like a map of the band's recent history and near future.

The Hollow Men

Forget choruses, forget verses. In fact forget melodies. The Hollow Men features none of the above. At five minutes filled with chords, distortions and echoes without real structure this track is easily the most elusive one from Garlands.

The song is obviously not so much about vocals or melodies as it is about atmosphere, which is dominated by very distorted guitars and sharp drum riffs, well emphasized by heavy bass lines. They all appear to play widely varying themes showing no easily recognizable patterns. Even a consistent rhythm is hard to locate. As steady as the drum rhythms are on many other songs from Garlands here they are erratic, varied and unpredictable.

The Hollow Men is difficult to grasp, but even here we find it is not consistently so. The first two minutes of the song are the most accessible part. It is here that the only real vocals feature as well. After that the song turns ever more intangible. The chords tumble over each other in pleasantly chaotic fashion and Liz' further contributions are restricted to just a few faint cries that are amplified by heavy echo effects.

The Hollow Men is an enigmatic song, a challenge to the listener to try and appreciate the Cocteaus at their peak of 'sound before structure'. Those preferring the band's later work may have a hard time here, but true fans of their early work will find this task no problem whatsoever.

Garlands

The sound of this track almost defines the style of the early Cocteau music. It starts off with just a soft distorted guitar noise, gradually getting louder and louder, then the drum machine joins in and finally Liz enters with some unusually clear lyrics:

The song maintains a steady rhythm throughout, with the bass providing the necessary melody lines whenever the guitar returns to playing distorted background sounds. The drum rhythm is addictive: note how it continuously hits one beat for six bars, then keeps quiet in the seventh and almost catches up with six quick beats in the eighth. Note also how the vocals are given just the odd bit of echo to add an impression of background singers. Nearly halfway through the song (just before the second chorus) a beautiful extra guitar melody is introduced, to give the song even more depth.

A final instrumental bit again features a heavily distorted guitar, the drum changes its rhythm slightly, and everything reaches a perfectly natural ending. In all then, this song constitutes one of the highlights of their early work.

An excellent live version was recorded during their first BBC session.

Grail Overfloweth

The Cocteau Twins selected Grail Overfloweth (great song title!) to be the last track on their debut album. And what an excellent choice it was, for this song with its mesmerizing rhythms and fairy-like atmosphere has truly everything one could wish to hear on a Cocteau Twins' track.

At 5:25 Grail Overfloweth is one of the longer songs from the band's repertoire. The pace is quite slow though, and the band were just taking their time to fully work out this track's magnificent themes. Take the bass for instance: a dark, brooding line, repeated over and over again, with subtle variations woven in, thereby creating a combination of steady rhythm with musical variety. The rhythm from the drums is extremely constant - but again there is this one odd beat which makes it unusual rather than straightforward.

If the rhythm section is noteworthy the guitars and vocals are just brilliant. In fact often we hear more than just a single guitar. There is an extremely distorted one, not unlike the one from Garlands, playing low growling chords. Note how it plays an exceptionally long drawn out note at the beginning. We can also hear much clearer notes though, taking care of the quicker rhythms, and Robin somehow managed to mix all this seamlessly together into a feast of sound.

Finally there are the vocals, contributing so much to the atmosphere of this song. After the first few hesitant drum beats Liz opens the proceedings with a gem of a melody. This line is repeated often. Often? The vocals are actually sparse in this song, but they are like the spice in a meal. Liz is never in a hurry here. Her voice is dreamy, lamenting, using her capacity to sing lengthy notes to the full.

The result of it all is this stunningly beautiful song, not just the final track of the album but also the perfect epitome of their music at the time.

Dear Heart

This is one of a few songs that apparently never had a studio version - at least only the BBC Sessions version was ever released. It's also the first of two songs with Gordon Sharp from Cindytalk as an additional vocalist (Hazel from the same BBC session is the other one), the only two times that such a thing ever happened in Cocteau history.

Sharp's contributions are fairly minimal in this song though. He sings what might best be described as a background vocal during the first 45 seconds of the song, before Liz actually takes the limelight. But when she does, she does so with a stunning conviction. This is a great vocal performance by Liz, who at this stage of her career was really growing towards her role as a supreme vocalist. Her contributions, especially in the chorus, are wonderfully strong (and it helps that the phrase Dear Heart is a great one to deliver). At some places a bit of echo further enhances her impressive vocal impact.

That's only half the story of the song though, because the other two band members are in equally inspired form. The bass lines from Will Heggie are weaving all around, and Robin plays his guitar in the best Garlands traditions: fairly distorted, wailing at length, but always creative and interesting. And although it starts out rather slowly the track gets ever livelier as it progresses due to Robin's increasingly complex guitar patterns.

A great song, that might well have been included on Garlands or Lullabies, but perhaps it was composed after those two, and admittedly it wouldn't quite have fitted on any subsequent studio release. Still, if a studio version of Dear Heart had ever been recorded it probably wouldn't have sounded much better than this one.

Hazel

(Note that the CD sleeve incorrectly lists track number 10 as Hearsay Please)

The original version of Hazel rocks as few other Cocteau tracks do, but the stunning BBC Sessions version manages to surpass it, mostly due to the great vocal contributions by Gordon Sharp, vocalist with Cindytalk.

It would seem virtually impossible to compete with Liz on the vocal level, and to his credit Gordon Sharp doesn't try to emulate Liz' parts. Instead he delivers some straightforward but extremely effective background vocals, mostly consisting of the single line to the outside.... The band apparently chose to gradually shift the emphasis between the two vocalists, which works wonderfully well. In the first parts Liz is singing on her own, but Gordon gradually increases his contributions. Midway through the two have a mesmerizing vocal exchange, and in the final parts Gordon gives a fabulous demonstration of how to end a song with some desolate vocals.

The result of all these vocal fireworks is an incredible version of an already great track.

Hearsay Please

(Note that the CD sleeve incorrectly lists track number 11 as Hazel)

Over the first half minute faint noises make you wonder whether the track has actually started, but after that a cascade of unexpectedly loud guitars makes it clear that Hearsay Please is everything but a quiet track. Instead it's a joyous song, lively, very quick and easy to remember.

Heavy guitars in very tight rhythms featured in many early Cocteau songs, and as such this track is a prime example. There is some pretty heavy percussion occasionally too. Well over a minute into the song Liz enters the contest. She has to sing pretty forcefully to get on a par with bass and guitars but even at full volume she still manages to put in many a vibrato as well.

The song remains loud throughout - a steady wall of guitars with lots of tambourine and bass support keep things going, while Liz takes care of most of the variations with several different melodies. Finally towards the end there is a clever change of key resulting in a very neat conclusion.

Amazingly no studio version was ever released of Hearsay Please. It's not too much of a loss though since the quality of this BBC recording is simply excellent.

Blind Dumb Deaf

The version recorded during the John Peel session is near identical to the studio version. The vocals use less overdub, the bass is played with some kind of echoing effect and the guitar sounds a bit flatter, but an unsuspecting listener might not even note the difference.

Speak No Evil

Speak No Evil was recorded at the same time as Garlands. But in the good old vinyl era LP's generally held only 40 minutes of music. That surely must have been the main reason for only putting eight tracks on Garlands rather than including Speak No Evil. Fortunately it was later added as a bonus track on the CD version.

There are surprising contrasts in this song. From the very first notes of the introduction we are presented an extremely slow rhythm. But it is not simply a quiet or beautiful track. There is too much distortion and too much diversity to turn it into the kind of peaceful song the band later in their career would excel at so often.

Liz' vocals are emphatic and intense, in particular during the chorus which consists of just a single line repeated liberally: "hear no - see no - speak no evil". The effect of this continuous repetition is a mesmerizing atmosphere with a suggestion of hidden threats.

The pace of the song is so slow that both verse and chorus can only be sung twice, but it doesn't matter because there is so much happening from an instrumental point of view. Robin allows his guitar to go through all kind of different creative loops and takes full control in the final part where he eventually makes the song end in extreme distortion.

Speak No Evil is an intriguing effort, a mystical work where the band manage to create a magical and oppressive atmosphere using a rhythm normally seen in love songs only.

Perhaps Some Other Aeon

Like the previous track, Speak No Evil, this song was added as a bonus track when Garlands was released on CD. That's where the similarity ends though, because Perhaps Some Other Aeon is a cheerful little song without too many complications.

The title of the song can be heard (either literally or as 'perhaps some other animal') many times throughout. That in itself is telling, because on most of the original Garlands tracks the vocal parts are not that abundant. But even more striking is the rather optimistic attitude of the song. Where many songs on Garlands have dark overtones, here we are treated to a lighthearted effort, with gentle percussion, little distortion, if any, and merry rhythms. In brief, it's a nice song, and easy to enjoy.

So why wasn't it included on the original vinyl album? Well, maybe it was recorded near the end of the Garlands era, when the band where about to change their concepts a little, and it may have been found to sound a bit too dissimilar to most of the other tracks. Or maybe it was only recorded after Garlands was released. Whatever it was, Perhaps Some Other Aeon is a pleasant enough track to enjoy its presence on the CD version.