365 Days of Song Recommendations: July 11
Cherry-coloured Funk — Cocteau Twins
This is one of those stories that ends as predicted: band forms, two members couple up while making epic music, the relationship implodes as they record their best work, then they break up.
The Scottish band Cocteau Twins came to life right after Joy Division, picking up the atmospheric dream pop and layering Elizabeth Fraser’s ethereal Bjork-like tweets and squeals — vocal acrobatics that you either love or hate. One of my previous reviews, Beach House, doesn’t exist without this band.
It’s easy to listen to a song like Cherry-coloured Funk a hundred times and never realize that the lyrics make absolutely no sense.
Beetles and eggs and blues and pour a little everything else
You steam a lens stable eyes and glass
Not get pissed off through my bird lips as good news
But that’s all okay because the sound works well, and the layered instrumentation creates the aura that makes Fraser’s meanderings fit right in. When I think of the ’80s that I want to remember — there’s so much I wish could be erased from memory — it sounds like Cocteau Twins. I don’t always want to listen to them, and even when I do it’s a song or two, or I’ll create a playlist from it so I can also hear Galaxie 500, Durutti Column, Siouxsie and the Banshees, New Order, etc… These are the sounds that define so much of my musical tastes, a love for dream pop that attracts me to the bands deeply influenced by this era.
Oh, and if you can make sense of these lyrics there’s something wrong with you.
Still being cried and laughed at from behind
Down far behind this fabulous, my turn rules
Beetles and eggs and blues and bells and eggs and blues
Beetles and eggs and blues and pour a little everything else
You steam a lens stable eyes and glass
Not get pissed off through my bird lips as good news
You’ll hang the hearts black and dull as the night
We hanged your pass and start being as you in ecstasy
(Still being cried and laughed at before)
Should I be sewn in, hugged, I can by not saying
(Still being cried and laughed at from light to blue)
And should I be hugged and tugged down through this tiger’s masque
And should I be sung and unbroken by not saying
You mind not saying
He’ll hang that heart’s black and dull as the night
(Still being cried and laughed at from behind me)
We hanged your pass and star being as you in ecstasy
(Still being cried and laughed at from behind me)
Should I be sung and unbroken by not saying
(Still being cried and laughed at from behind me)
Hugged and tugged down through this tiger’s masque for key
“Cherry-colored Funk” is the 192nd song on the exclusive #365Songs playlist!
