Four-Calendar Café (1993), Cocteau Twins
When seraphs sell out they do so on such high notes that their fanatics can’t help but cover their ears from the sheer splendor of it all. Enochian utterances, once the source of many an exploded head – only rarely translated through the scribbling of independent (and very hardy) prophets – are now replaced with Plain English Gospel on High Directly to the Masses. The very hardy prophets are now out of work, and the dedicated faithful, prideful of their sacred occult enjoyments, are now resentful that their cupids come to wider audiences – “are we not the chosen few, the special ones?” Thou hast cast them down into destruction. These newcomers – “those that pretend to believe” – are not worthy; ephemerals and fad-chasers, blasphemers and worth-nothings.
“I liked Cocteau Twins before it was cool.”
The pretension revealed: one might assume that spreading the joy is of utmost importance, yet these situations strip away the persona, revealing the pure vanity underneath – the vanity of fandom. This is the story of Cocteau Twins’ seventh studio album, 1993’s “Four-Calendar Café”; a stripped-back record that sounds more like The Sundays than Cocteau Twins; an album where the seraphical Elizabeth Fraser’s previously unintelligible babblings are replaced with plain English and guitar wizard Robin Guthrie has layered only two guitar tracks on each song, as opposed to a whopping six hundred. The result is pure pop brilliance that cleaved a rift down the middle of the Cocteau Twins fanbase. Adding fuel to the fire, the Twins jumped ship from their old label, 4AD, to a major record label; Capitol Records in the US and Mercury Records in the UK – a move that ardent fans saw as akin to sleeping with the enemy.
“Four-Calendar Cafés” is named after an autobiographical book by William Least Heat-Moon, “Blue Highways,” in which the author – having recently divorced and lost his job – traveled America on old beaten highways, ranking cafés by the number of calendars hanging on their walls. This, of course, assumes that Cocteau Twins’ seventh album is only four calendars worth of quality, which, depending on your perspective of time and/or ranking systems, is either middling or maximum quality.
(Many critics, including the late, great Roger Ebert, use a star system where “four stars” represent the maximum; this is arbitrary. Summing up the quality of a work via numerical values (stars or gross profits or otherwise) is insufficient and devalues the effort and essence of the work in question; this is why I largely consider ‘music/film/book/(art) critique’ silly and try to stay within the subjective lines of ‘well, I liked it and maybe you will to!’ or the opposite, and will never provide a score for any artistic work ever; of course, after this dual consciousness completes, I will immediately contradict myself, as one often does.)
“Four-Calendar Café” is easily four calendars’ worth of quality. The Twins have crafted a stripped-back, subdued record that still swirls in both effervescent and lugubrious dreamstuff, rivaling the mood-mapping of all their previous work and then some. This becomes quickly apparent from the first half of the album, where ‘Know Who You Are At Every Age’ sets the mood with a lazy late afternoon drum fill that morphs into even lazier bongo beats, backed by the silken strumming of a virginal guitar and a second guitar deflowered only by the languid echoing onomatopoeia of waves slowly swashing sandcastles on the beach in chilly Autumn. Years prior, this song would have been overwrought with guitar overdubbing and vociferous effects-laden tones in an attempt to force the mood out of the instruments, but here, Robin Guthrie manages to capture the ambiance without the exaggeration.
Video: Cocteau Twins – Know Who You Are At Every Age
“I’ve consciously been stripping things back. In the past, I’ve always wanted one more overdub, one more melody, because I’m terrible for thinking that my music isn’t good enough. So if I put in a few more frilly overdubs, then it’ll be alright. These ones are more substantial. The ideas are more focused.” –Robin Guthrie on “Four-Calendar Café,” Cocteau Twins Fansite
This practice of ‘stripping things back’ is evident throughout the entire record, showcasing a laser focus in sharp contrast to the chaotic album art by Walter Wick of “I Spy” fame. Songs like ‘Oil of Angels’ feature only keyboards, calming backbeats, and melodious guitar plucking that serves simply to highlight Elizabeth Fraser’s angelic choruses; her soprano remains as indescribable as ever, even when the lyrics are in English, often trailing off into the chirruping of exotic birds, creating a relaxing trance of a song that could only be crafted by the occult alchemy of Cocteau Twins.
*Elizabeth Fraser on 9/11/1993 issue of Melody Maker for the release of “Four-Calendar Café”
Tracks like ‘Evangeline’ and ‘Theft, Wandering Around Lost’ stand out as two of Elizabeth Fraser’s most emotional pieces on an already incredibly soulful album that is, essentially, a breakup record at its core. Fraser and Robin Guthrie, once self-described ‘soulmates,’ were in the middle of a breakup, or had already broken up; the minutiae of their private lives are hazy (as they should be), but Fraser, through her vulnerable lyrics, is uncharacteristically transparent about the ‘why’ of their separation. Fraser, intimately linked with Robin for the entirety of Cocteau Twins’ existence (14 years at this point) and mother of his child, sings incredibly potent lines such as “Sorrow – for letting someone else define you know who you are at every age” on ‘Evangeline’ and “Are you the right man for me? Are you safe? Are you my friend?” on ‘Bluebeard,’ two very alien yet poppy singles that charted higher than anything the Twins had released thus far. The tension during the recording of these songs, nay: the entire album – the subject matter of which should have been obvious to Guthrie – must have been palpable; however, this tension never negatively impacted the music. Instead, this tumultuous breakup, the raw emotion of the whole thing, resulted in the most focused and, absolutely, the most human of Cocteau Twins’ otherworldly discography.
Video: Cocteau Twins – Evangeline
From the moment Evangeline’s chorus kicks in, we are consumed and ‘there is no going back.’ We are fully part of it. Quite possibly the Cocteau Twins’ greatest song, alongside ‘Heaven or Las Vegas,’ ‘Cherry-Colored Funk,’ and ‘Lorelei.’ The pure pop of ‘Bluebeard,’ which sounds very similar to their contemporaries The Sundays (who were themselves largely influenced by Cocteau Twins) and ‘Squeeze-Wax’ with its beautifully bouncy guitar riff complementing Fraser’s fluttering vocals and seamless middle eight section that feels like it was Simply Meant To Be, serve to raise the album from languishing in pure lovelost with a reminder that you are, essentially, listening to a pop record – a pop record that may or may not have been recorded on an alien planet or in the otherworldly realm of the religion of your choosing. By the time ‘Pur’ comes along – the final song on the album, an ode to Fraser’s daughter that erupts mid-song into a lush haze reminiscent of Cocteau Twins’ earlier work – you have already replayed every song on the record at least five times, artificially extending the 41-minute runtime to 205.
Upon its 1993 release, “Four-Calendar Café” stood as Cocteau Twins’ most accessible album, boasting two largely successful singles and a performance of ‘Bluebeard’ on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.” The Twins had finally achieved commercial success. By this time, however, they had already inadvertently spawned entire subgenres of rock music, including dreampop and shoegaze, and a direct line can be drawn from Cocteau Twins to the success of bands such as Lush, My Bloody Valentine, and Slowdive. The point is that Cocteau Twins were simply themselves and nothing more; they didn’t consciously ‘sell out’; they had been progressing in this direction since their previous album, “Heaven or Las Vegas,” and “Four-Calendar Café” was a natural continuation into more stripped-back, accessible pop music. Fans eventually warmed up to this album, but initially railed on it for departing from their noisy goth roots – but who cares? The music is Beyond Good. Fandoms, as a hivemind, often make the mistake of assuming that widespread popularity dilutes the artistry or that ‘accessibility’ equates to a ‘dumbing down’ of the craft; these are mere correlations, not causations, and these assumptions frequently lead to missing out on Some Really Good Stuff.
With that being said, if “Four-Calendar Café” is what happens when seraphs sell out, then count me among the faithful who can only be so lucky as to bask in the ethereal splendor that arises when celestials leave their multidimensional plane to explore the complexities of our three-dimensional mortal sorrows, joys, and everything-elses.
