Ok, it’s been a while since we actually wrote anything on here, but we have met, sporadically, in the intervening years post-Covid. We even met during Covid, huddled round our screens, staring into what seemed like an eternal abyss. I use these words since the night started by bringing up that ever existential threat, our mortal coil. Life for some of us has thrown that into clear perspective, and so this album choice of mine too at the tender age of 17. We lost a classmate. She died of meningitis at sixth form. I walked into our common room at the school, where with the transition from the playground we were allowed to play our own music, hang out in our own clothes, and encounter all those rights of passage into adulthood, including the loss of one of our own it seems. Everybody was silent that morning following her untimely death, and no music was playing. It was normally customary to dash to the turntable, or cassette player. No CDs back then. I was a little oblivious to the mood that morning, not knowing what had happened and I put this album on. Well, the last track ‘Ella Megablast Burls Forever’. When it ended, I can’t recall exactly what happened, but someone told me that we were supposed to be sitting in silence to her memory. Mortified, I went over to her best friend to apologise, and she said it was ok, and the song seemed to fit the mood well anyway. Which it did, in retrospect, and many years after. Since then I can’t hear it without thinking of that, and the death later that year of my sister’s boyfriend (who was also in our sixth form) in a tragic road accident. In that year I had experienced the fragility of life, and this was my soundtrack. RIP Jo and Glyn.
So, now years later, and having lost the vinyl version of this somewhere along the line I bought a CD copy. The brief for tonight was to bring an album (on CD) that we hadn’t listened to for a while, but wanted to hear on Nick’s new stereo. Something of a wonder it is too. All shiny and pulling out hidden vocals and backing music, beats previously unheard. The Cocteau Twins to me have always been an audio wonder. Shimmering guitars, other worldly vocals. Maybe I would hear something new with Nick’s new kit!
Blue Bell Knoll was released in 1988, and even some 36 years after it’s release (where did that time go?) we all agreed that although you can date it to that decade, it still feels fresh today. Younger generations seem to take to it. Perhaps it’s the ethereal indistinguishable lyrics that convey emotions, rather than concrete verbal meanings? From the opening hypnotic electronic percussion of the opener and title track ‘Blue Bell Knoll’ this album unfurls itself like a black flower, deep, dark and sometimes (for me) moody. I still tap into those emotions felt as a 17 year old all those years ago, experiencing life, and death. The guitar blends effortlessly with the drum machine, and the vocals of Elizabeth Fraser rising and falling on ‘Athal-Brose’. For those who are new to the Cocteaus, this is perhaps one of their more accessible albums. There’s much trickier material on Treasure and Victorialand, but this could easily wet the appetite of those of a poppier persuasion. For instance ‘Carolyn’s Fingers’ boasts a backing beat that was not out of place with the dancier elements of the late 1980s. It’s almost if they adapted and bent towards the times, but without compromising their uniqueness, without hiding or flinching from the darkness of goth. The stand-out track for me is ‘Cico Buff’, which Tom told me was a top 5 selection for many journos in the Melody Maker that year. Then, the final track, which for me carries so much emotion. On the night we didn’t listen in silence, but ‘Ella Magablast’ will be forever burned on my memory of those early years, and the knowledge that time is passing, fleeting, and yet the world opens and unfurls in its beauty and majesty captured here perfectly in the Cocteaus’ musical delight. Simultaneously real, ethereal and imagined it’s one for the senses.
Devon Record Club 