Released: 1993 and 1996
Label: 4AD
Genre: Alternative
4AD will reissue the final two Cocteau Twins albums to U.S. consumers tomorrow. The releases include vinyl pressings for the first time in that country.
Four-Calendar Café and Milk & Kisses closed out the trio’s recording career in sparkling form. Despite a bit of grumbling among those who preferred their earlier, less-polished output, these two albums are heart-achingly beautiful.
A Toronto-based magazine called Venue asked me to interview bassist/keyboardist Simon Raymonde after Milk & Kisses was released in 1996.
Which is your favourite Cocteau Twins album?
In many ways Four-Calendar Café, which will probably come as a surprise because it’s most people’s least favourite. But emotionally, I have quite a strong attachment to that, because it almost was the record that either split the group up or never got finished.
Is that the closest the band has ever come to splitting up?
I don’t know if it ever was a strong possibility, but certainly if there was any time when we should have broken up, or could have broken up, that was it. Things were at a very low point. It would have been so easy for us to split up, maybe not at that moment, but certainly during the tour that followed it.
What kept you together?
The fact that we all really still love each other I suppose. It sounds sappy, but when you’re stuck in a relationship with people, you see them at their most vulnerable. It’s kind of like a marriage, but more complex because we’ve all been through a lot of different things together. And we’ve connected in ways most people never get connected. I think there’s something else that goes on when the three of us get together in the studio that none of us can explain. Something that doesn’t work when we’re with other people. It would have been so easy when Robin had his big drug problem, and Liz and Robin split up. At that moment, one could have easily said, ‘Well, there you should have split the group up.’ But the thing that’s so miraculous is, we didn’t. We decided to see through the problems, work them out, find out where they stemmed from and get to the root of it all.
Things are good these days?
Yes, things couldn’t be better. Hopefully, that comes across in the music. From our point of view, the best is yet to come. I know you would expect me to say that in an interview promoting a record or a tour, but I don’t say it glibly. I really mean it.
The Moderns 
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