Heaven Or Las Vegas

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a b Aston, Martin (October 1990). "The Cocteau Twins: Heaven Or Las Vegas". Q. No.49. Archived from the original on 20 June 2000 . Retrieved 15 October 2018. Even as the band soared commercially and creatively, personally they suffered. Between the release of Blue Bell Knoll and the recording of Heaven or Las Vegas, Fraser gave birth to the couple’s first child, a daughter, yet Guthrie remained deep in the throes of drug addiction, which made him paranoid and angry. Raymonde mourned the death of his father. Suddenly the stakes for the Cocteau Twins seemed impossibly high. “Fraser named the album Heaven or Las Vegas [as] a suggestion of music versus commerce, or perhaps a gamble, one last throw of the dice,” Martin Aston writes in Facing the Other Way: The Story of 4AD, implying that the band was close to imploding.

Phillips, Shaun (15 September 1990). "Heaven scent". Sounds. Archived from the original on 5 August 2021 . Retrieved 28 January 2023. NME named Heaven or Las Vegas the 28th best album of 1990. [36] Retrospectively, The Observer listed the album as the 97th-greatest British album ever made. [37] In 2017, NPR listed Heaven or Las Vegas 138th of the 150 Greatest Albums Made By Women. [38] In 2018, Pitchfork ranked it first on its list of the 30 best dream pop albums. [39] Pitchfork Staff (28 September 2022). "The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s". Pitchfork . Retrieved 26 April 2023. By 1990, when Cocteau Twins released Heaven or Las Vegas—their final album for 4AD, the independent UK label that had shepherded their journey from post-punk mystics to ambient-pop dream-weavers...Sandow, Greg (21 September 1990). " Heaven or Las Vegas". Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on 29 September 2015 . Retrieved 29 September 2015. a b "Cocteau Twins: 'Blue Bell Knoll' and 'Heaven or Las Vegas' LP Represses Coming this July". 4AD. 22 May 2014. Archived from the original on 13 February 2016 . Retrieved 5 August 2017. LeMay, Matt (17 November 2003). "Top 100 Albums of the 1990s – 090: Cocteau Twins Heaven or Las Vegas". Pitchfork. Archived from the original on 5 April 2016 . Retrieved 15 October 2018. a b "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Rolling Stone. 22 September 2020 . Retrieved 22 September 2020. recently reissued these two excellent albums by the Cocteau Twins on vinyl and in a way it feels like the timing could not be more pertinent. The band's influence is evident everywhere from the keyboard-drenched power-pop of recent Beach House to the fizzing rhythmic synth-gaze of The Horrors' latest. They'll even be touched on in the eagerly anticipated shoegaze documentary Beautiful Noise later this year. Yet it's almost impossible even now to view the band as nothing other than an idiosyncratic unit inhabiting only their own self-made soundworld. No artist has been able or even attempted to mimic their style; resting on Elizabeth Frazer's seemingly wordless, melismatic vocals and guitarist Robin Guthrie's maximalist approach to effects including flange, phase, chorus and delay that give the impression of an enhanced depth.

a b c d e f g McAuliffe, Colm (1 July 2014). "Divine Rapture: Simon Raymonde Revisits Cocteau Twins' Purple Patch". The Skinny. Archived from the original on 1 April 2016 . Retrieved 8 August 2017. Riley, Danny (1 August 2014). "Cocteau Twins – Blue Bell Knoll/Heaven or Las Vegas (Reissue)". The Quietus. Archived from the original on 15 October 2018 . Retrieved 8 August 2017. The 30 Best Dream Pop Albums". Pitchfork. 16 April 2018. p.3. Archived from the original on 24 April 2018 . Retrieved 24 April 2018. Cocteau Twins had spent most of the 80s progressing from jangly chamber pop to the deeply sensuous, abstract sound and aesthetic evident on The Moon And The Melodies, their collaborative album with minimalist composer Harold Budd. Yet 1988's Blue Bell Knoll still feels like something of a stepping-stone. 4AD had suggested that Brian Eno produce the record, but the band spurned the idea, opting instead to build their own studio and produce the album themselves. This is clearly the action of a band straining at the leash to take control over every aspect of their sound. However it's a decidedly front-heavy album, with most of the poppy big-hitters inhabiting the first side of the LP whilst a general sense of poor sequencing is evident. The languid stroll of 'For Phoebe Still A Baby' would have served better as a moment of afterglow towards the end of the work, whilst 'The Itchy Glowbo Blow' just sounds tired; an example of how insipid the Cocteau's productions could sound without a decent tune to flesh it out. Raymonde wrote "Frou-Frou Foxes in Midsummer Fires" the day after his father's death, [12] and Heaven or Las Vegas straddled the two themes: "writing songs about birth, and also death, gave the record a darker side that I hear in songs like 'Cherry-Coloured Funk' and 'Fotzepolitic'". [10] Despite being in a "very good space musically" and describing the recording process as an "inspirational time", Raymonde said: "It was trying to mask all the other shit that was going on that we didn't want to stop and think about for too long". [12] In a retrospective of 4AD by music journalist Martin Aston, he noted that Fraser named the album Heaven or Las Vegas as "a suggestion of truth versus artifice, of music versus commerce, or perhaps a gamble, one last throw of the dice". [18]

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