The former members of Cocteau Twins have been on their own longer than the prolific sixteen years they were together as a band. They went from being scrappy teenage runaways from small-town Scotland to heavy rotation on the BBC’s coveted John Peel Show in mere months. Within a few years they were among the most beloved post-punk indie bands in the UK, with a growing international following and a music press that couldn’t quite find the words, and really never did. The twist was they could barely pin it down themselves, much to the frustration of just about every journalist who tried to interview them. They never claimed to be waiting for a muse to inspire them, and disavowed any idea of a grand design, concept, or intention behind their music. Questions of relevance seemed lost on them, too. Relevance, as far as Cocteau Twins’ music goes, is truly in the ear of the beholder: It’s what the listener makes of it, whatever the time or place. In most ways, their music remains unmoored from such things — as if they’d lived sealed off from the rest of the world, sending out the occasional musical missive. They existed in a category by themselves — one they created.
Others have tried to reproduce or capture their sound, with limited success. The few artists who have succeeded sound mostly unlike them, but have managed to convey an essence: inspiration without imitation (think Beach House, Goldfrapp, Sigur Rós, or even M83). Cocteau Twins were a foundational influence for whole categories of music, notably dream-pop and shoegaze — forms that have themselves found new 21st-century audiences. Given their association with 4AD’s early crop of bands like The Birthday Party and Bauhaus (and the comparisons to Siouxsie & the Banshees), they also became and continue to be a staple of goth, though they mostly eschewed goth’s trappings.
Years later, in a world exploding with musical creativity, output, and listening sources, the Cocteaus’ music brings its own kind of relevance — again, if that means anything anymore — as they are rediscovered by people, mostly of a younger generation, yearning for something seminal or transcendent. (The song “Pearly-Dewdrops’ Drops” played an important role in the novel and young adult film, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower,” as recently as 2012; in 2020 Heaven or Las Vegas was ranked among the most important albums of all time by more than one media outlet.) It is a testament to the timelessness of their sound and production quality that many new fans don’t even know that the story actually started in 1979, or that the trio formerly known as Cocteau Twins long ago moved on to new endeavours. Even now, younger fans enquire regularly about “the next album” or “upcoming live shows.” From: https://cocteautwins.com/introduction.html
