The Spangle Maker

I’m not a superstitious person. I don’t have any routines or beliefs about black cats or knocking on wood. We were taught to salute a magpie when we were kids but I’m not sure why and I stopped doing it decades ago. I’m not religious either. I tend to require scientific or empirical evidence for the existence of things and religion doesn’t fit into that for me. I understand why religion works for other people and I can see why it brings comfort especially when dealing with death and questions about the afterlife. 

I was out cycling on Sunday morning. I try to get out on my bike every weekend and do a couple of hours on the roads. One of my routes can bring me back past the cemetery where Isaac is buried. From one of the roads, especially in winter when the hedges are bare, I can see him from the road more or less, the line of graves at the top of rise clearly visible. At first I couldn’t cycle past without stopping and going in to see him but now I can ride past, look to my right, nod or wave, and keep going. We usually go down to see him once a week anyway so I don’t feel compelled to call in on him every time I’m riding past.

There’s a bus route that runs down the road too. It drops people at the end of the road near the cemetery and then carries on towards Lymm. Isaac loved public transport- buses, Manchester’s trams, trains all ticked his boxes- and it’s amazing how many times we’ve stood at his graveside and seen the bus run past in the distance, all the more amazing because there are only two an hour. It always makes me smile to see it, and in a way it’s become Isaac’s bus (I know that the appearance of the bus is entirely coincidental, that it's not appearing because we are there or because of Isaac. Confirmation bias is real).

When Isaac died a friend gave us some wind chimes. She said we should hang them in the garden and when the breeze makes them move and chime, we’d think of him. Which they do and in a good way. 'Oh, hello Isaac', Lou sometimes says when she's out in the garden and it happens. Again, I don’t think that the chimes are actually Isaac trying to make contact from beyond the grave but it does happen as our friend said and it’s a nice reminder of him, one that brings a smile.

On Sunday morning I wasn’t planning on going to see Isaac as part of my bike ride but hadn’t fully decided which route to take to get home. I stopped at some traffic lights on the outskirts of Lymm and immediately a white feather dropped out of the sky and landed on the road right in front of me. I turned my head to the left and in the hedge next to me was a robin, looking at me. It fluttered and flew off. Some people believe that white feathers are a sign that someone is watching over you, a message from the deceased. Some believe that robins are the dead visiting us, that they appear when loved ones are nearby. 

My scientific head tells me that neither are very likely (and that if Isaac was trying to contact us he wouldn't necessarily appear as a white feather or a robin) but the combination of the two at the same time startled me a little. A mile or two further on I pulled into the lanes that run near the cemetery and Isaac’s bus appeared from round the bend in front of me. At that point I took the signs for what they seemed to be- ‘alright, Isaac, alright' I thought to myself, almost saying it out loud, 'I’m coming'. I cycled to the cemetery, said hello, had a little tidy up of his grave and then headed for home.

The Spangle Maker

The Spangle Maker was on a Cocteau Twins EP from April 1984, a slow burning sea of noise that breaks into a crashing, swooning torrent of reverb, guitars and Liz Fraser's otherworldly voice, a song that almost feels like someone making contact from another realm. 

Music Is The Answer

It would be overly dramatic to say that music has saved my life this year but there's no doubt it has been there to pull me through and has provided moments where I have been, temporarily, transported out of myself. Grief has been permanent- changing but still permanent- and music has been one of the ways through which I have been lifted out of it, even if only for a few minutes. 

Back in December 2021, in the week or two immediately after Isaac died, I didn't listen to any music. The grief was so raw and so harsh, so present in my body. I never knew that emotional pain could be so physically painful, that it could actually hurt so badly. There was a Saturday afternoon in December were I sat in our back room. It seemed like it was dark all day and that that particular Saturday afternoon would drift on endlessly forever. Eventually I played a record from the pile near my feet, Promise by SUSS, which I'd bought not long previously (although it came out in 2020). SUSS play ambient Americana/ ambient country, and the album is a quiet wash of gentle drones and sounds, pedal steel, e-bow guitar, mandolin and so on, with loops. If I remember correctly, I just needed something to take away the silence in the room, ambient music to provide something else to focus on while sitting staring into the room. 

Home

As the afternoon wore on I was able to sit on the sofa and listen to wordless, largely ambient music and it helped in some way. I played both sides of Promise and when it finished I plugged my phone into the stereo and played what was then the latest in Richard Norris' monthly Music For Healing ambient releases, December. The music couldn't take the pain away but it seemed to provide something, a salve of some kind. After forty minutes of Music For Healing I pulled out a record from the pile near to me, the records that were either most recently bought or taken from the shelves because I wanted to listen to them- the pile was all from before Isaac's death. A few records in was the recent re- issue of Victorialand by Cocteau Twins. The gauzelike guitars, ambient-ish haze and Liz Fraser's voice all became part of that afternoon. 

The Thinner The Air

During 2022 I've been to lots of gigs, more than in any single since the late 80s/ early 90s I think, when gig going was cheap and weekly. Some were bought as presents last Christmas- we had no time to do any real Christmas shopping for each other in the aftermath of Isaac's death. In January I saw Half Man Half Biscuit at the Ritz. A month later we saw John Cooper Clarke with Mike Garry and Luke Wright at the Bridgewater Hall. I saw John Cooper Clarke again in November at the Apollo supporting Squeeze courtesy of a friend with a spare. A few weeks ago the same friend gave me a ticket for Stereolab at the New Century Hall. In between I've seen a revelatory Ride doing Nowhere at the Ritz, Paul Weller at the Apollo, Andy Bell upstairs at Gullivers, The Charlatans doing Between 10th And 11th in full and then the hits at the New Century Hall, Echo And The Bunnymen in imperious form at Manchester's Albert Hall, Ian McCulloch solo (with a band) at Nantwich Words and Music Festival, Pete Wylie and Wah! at Night And Day, Warpaint (also at the Albert Hall), Pet Shop Boys at the arena and Primal Scream at Castlefield Bowl. Quite a few of these were courtesy of the generosity of friends, something I'm really grateful for. 

At some of these gigs I've cried, sometimes completely unexpectedly and overhwlemingly. At Echo And The Bunnymen in February the opening chords and first verse/ chorus of Nothing Lasts Forever reduced me to a mess of tears, I almost dissolved completely. In September The Charlatans' North Country Boy made me cry, Mike Garry's poetry did it, Pete Wylie did it more than once, Pet Shop Boys too with Being Boring. None of these tears have been a bad thing, they've all hit an emotional spot that connected me to Isaac in some way. As well as the tears (and the looks from other gig goers that a middle aged man crying at a gig can bring, followed by me shrugging and smiling) these gigs have provided moments where I've been transported out of myself for a while- for a song or for an hour. Good gigs can do that anyway, provide an act of communion between band and crowd, between music and people, but the act of being transported away somewhere else is a magical one and not much else has been able to do it this year. 

In October I DJed at the Golden Lion in Todmorden as part of The Flightpath Estate group, five of us supporting and warming up for David Holmes. The memories of that afternoon and evening still linger and of Holmes' set in that packed pub, four hours of dance music, the transportative effect of music once again lifting me up and out of myself. 

In a year where grief and pain have been ever-present, where the physical manifestations of bereavement have been there almost every single day, where the loss of Isaac has been such a huge sucking black hole in our lives, music in all its forms- that long ambient afternoon last December, experienced live at gigs, listened on record, streamed through the computer, listened to via headphones while out walking, bought from Bandcamp and burned to CD to play in the car, played on a tinny portable speaker on a balcony in Gran Canaria in July- has often been the answer. It won't bring Isaac back- nothing will- but at times it makes being without him something that can be borne or briefly make the loss and his absence fade for a while. 

Vapour Trail, the final song from Ride's Nowhere when it came out back in 1990 and the set closer at the 30th anniversary tour, was a beautiful moment at the Ritz, a crowd of middle aged and their late teenage/ early twenties children singing along to the swirling guitars, pounding drums and Andy Bell's declaration of love. Music is the answer. 

Vapour Trail

Half An Hour Of Liz Fraser

Liz Fraser's voice, whether with The Cocteau Twins or guest appearances with other artists, is a unique, almost miraculous thing. Trying to describe it is fairly pointless. It swoops and soars and has a magical, otherworldly quality. Sometimes it's gossamer thin, distant and a part of the shimmering, hazy swirl of the Cocteau Twins records, the lyrics difficult to work out and impressionistic. Sometimes it's much bolder and in the foreground, clear and insistent. Here's this week's half hour mix (actually thirty eight minutes) of Liz Fraser's voice, variously with Cocteau Twins, This Mortal Coil, Ian McCulloch, Massive Attack, Harold Budd and Felt. 

Half An Hour Of Liz Fraser

• Cocteau Twins: Pearly Dewdrops' Drop
• Cocteau Twins: The Spangle Maker
• Ian McCulloch: Candleland
• Massive Attack: Teardrop (Mad Professor Mazaruni Vocal Remix)
• This Mortal Coil: Song To The Siren
• This Mortal Coil: Edit To The Siren (In The Valley Re- edit)
• Cocteau Twins: Cherry- coloured Funk
• Felt: Primitive Painters
• Harold Budd, Simon Raymonde, Robin Guthrie, Liz Fraser: Ooze Out And Away, Onehow

Throughout The Dark Months

My recent rediscovery of The Cocteau Twins continues. Last week I found myself in a record shop with some Christmas money burning a record sized and shaped hole in my pocket and among other things I bought a very nice re- issue of their 1986 mini- album Victorialand, a record of theirs I didn't already own. The Cocteau Twin's music is such an immersive experience despite being quiet at times and ethereal (to use a word that the music press often used about their sound). It demands you stop what you're doing and listen to it, not just have it on. 

Bassist Simon Raymonde was absent in 1986, involved in making the This Mortal Coil album. Robin Guthrie and Liz Fraser went ahead without him, making a largely acoustic album, stripped of basslines and percussion/ drums. It's a minimal, stripped bare Cocteau Twins, Guthrie's acoustic guitar, FX and melodies and Fraser's unique lyrics and vocals producing something approaching ambient- indie. Occasionally some sax or tuba joins in. It's beautiful and stark- like the polar caps that inspired much of the record. 

Throughout The Dark Months Of April And May

This song's title came from the commentary of a David Attenborough wildlife documentary about the Arctic and the album's title is the name of part of Antarctica claimed by the British in the 19th century. 

Christmas

We live close to the River Mersey. Isaac's wake, a week ago today (and how quickly that week has passed) was at Ashton- on- Mersey cricket club, down by the river. It was somewhere we walked with him quite often and when we were looking for a venue for his wake we needed somewhere which had a good outdoor space so anyone who wanted to be outside could be. I still don't feel fully comfortable being inside a pub and sit outside out of habit now. We walked down by the river yesterday, a good round trip past the cricket club, over the river, skirting the edge of Urmston and back under the M60. It was peculiar seeing the cricket club a week on. We don't get many sunsets in south Manchester but the picture above caught one of them, the sun dipping below the treeline behind the river. We're going to go back to see him today at the cemetery. We went twice in the days after the funeral, once to leave him a mini- Christmas tree. We said to each other last Friday we were going try to have a Christmas of some kind and that's what we're going to do. 

I realised yesterday as well that I haven't done the annual self- indulgence that is the Bagging Area end of year list. I did start putting a list of favourite albums and songs together back in November so that'll give me something to do in a few days time. 

Some festive songs to take us into Christmas. First up Cocteau Twins 1993 cover of Frosty The Snowman, originally released on the Volume CD. There's something about the Cocteau's sound, all that reverb and those chiming guitars which is very wintry. I'm not a big fan of Christmas songs but this one will do.

Frosty The Snowman

Back in 2011 when Johnny Marr and The Healers put out a freebie download, an instrumental with plenty of guitars, acoustic and electric. In a world where ex- Smiths have veered in divergent directions morally and politically, choose Marr. 

Free Christmas

I was listening to  Life's Too Good by The Sugarcubes recently, an album I think I'll come back to on these pages soon. In 1988 Iceland's finest released Birthday on 12" with three remixes by The Jesus And Mary Chain (Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Christmas Present). This one is the one for today.

Birthday (Christmas Eve)

And finally, something bang up to date and released yesterday by Pye Corner Audio for Christmas (if you fancy your Christmas a tad dystopic). Get Thee Behind Me Santa is all backwards sounds, drones and distorted synths. Find it at Bandcamp (free/ pay what you want). And well worth whatever you feel you should pay. 

Happy Christmas. 

Lorelei

Back to November 1984 today and a slice of glistening indie- pop from The Cocteau Twins. All those words and phrases the press used to describe their music- ethereal, dreampop, sonic cathedrals, angelic voices, diaphanous- are all cliches but also all very close to the mark. Shards of crystalline, heavily delayed guitar, a massively reverbed drum machine and Liz's stellar vocals are all present, front and centre. 

Lorelei was on Treasure, an album that the press raved about and was bought in large quantities- at the time it was 4AD's best selling record. The band hated it, Robin Guthrie calling it a product of an 'arty farty pre- Raphaelite' period he felt they got pushed into and Simon Raymonde their 'worst album by a mile'. But what do bands know? Listening to Treasure now and Lorelei specifically it sounds pretty wondrous. Like many of their 80s records it's a romantic and impressionistic, three people conjuring up something distinct and unique. 

Lorelei 

Cherry Coloured

At the end of last week JC at The Vinyl Villain posted three songs by Cocteau Twins, the epically beautiful Pearly Dewdrops Drop and the two songs from the 12" single, The Spangle Maker and Pepper- Tree. By coincidence I'd recently pulled the band's 1990 album Heaven Or Las Vegas off the shelf, intending to give it a listen. The opening song, Cherry- coloured Funk, is a spellbinding and breath taking three minutes, a liquid, melting guitar riff played over the simplest of drum machine beats, a swirl of FX lying just behind. Liz Fraser's voice glides in on top, an otherworldly blur of words and then without warning a sudden soaring moment to a falsetto part that is . The guitar riff comes back again, round and round in its gently trippy, off kilter groove and Liz sings on- I've no idea what she's singing about and it really doesn't matter, the words are just part of the sound (I'm sure they meant something to Liz when she wrote them). The band was going through some churn at the time and there's a slight unease about the album, hints at the darkness of their personal lives (you can hear it in Cherry- coloured Funk) but there's also an energy about the songs and the rush bands get when they're on a creative roll and on fire. 

Cherry- coloured Funk

Ooze Out And Away

When people say/ write, 'see you on the other side' about Christmas, it feels very apt when you emerge from the fug of Christmas Day into Boxing Day, waking up to a house littered with presents and bits of wrapping paper and gift tags that didn't get put into the bin yesterday, dirty glasses and mugs, and a fridge full of leftover food. This song, a 1986 collaboration between Cocteau Twins and Harold Budd was playing on the kitchen stereo this morning when I made a cup of tea and decided all I really wanted for breakfast was some toast with Marmite.  

Ooze Out And Away, Onehow

Vaughan Oliver

Vaughan Oliver died yesterday aged 62. He was the man responsible for the creating the artwork that graced the sleeves of a slew of bands in the 1980s and 90s and the entire visual identity of 4AD. The selection above shows how distinctive, eye catching and beautiful his work was but also how varied. It helps that the music contained within the 12" by 12" squares above was always of the highest calibre- Lush, Pixies, This Mortal Coil, Cocteau Twins, Ultra Vivid Scene, MARRS, Colourbox, Pale Saints (and also Throwing Muses, The Breeders, AR Kane, Belly... the list goes on). From the days when buying records based on the label they were issued on was commonplace and when the artwork mattered as much as the music.

Here in 1991 are Lush performing their single Sweetness and Light at The Dome, shoegaze pop with a Manchester swing to the rhythm. Vaughan Oliver RIP.

You're The Match Of Jericho

In the nearly eight years I've been doing this blog the only Cocteau Twins song I've featured has been Frosty The fucking Snowman so it's well past time to rectify that. Their 1989 album Heaven Or Las Vegas found them approaching accessibility and looking for the fabled crossover. Iceblink Luck is full of wobbly, woozy sounds but is also technicolour, centre stage, looking for attention, and in tune with the times it has a rhythm that you could almost dance to/shamble about to.

Iceblink Luck

For all her new audibility I'm still none the wiser as to what Liz is singing about but it doesn't really matter.

'You're the match of Jericho
That will burn this whole madhouse down
And I'll throw open like a walnut safe
You will seem more like being that same bot-tle of exquisite stuff
Yes, you are the match of Jericho 
That will burn 
This whole madhouse down and I'll throw 
Open like the wall, not safe

You, yourself, and your father don't know
So part in your own ways
You're really both bone setters
Thank you for mending me babies'

Advent Post Number Six

That advent calendar's looking a bit battered now isn't it? It hasn't helped that someone sat on it, bending it in two. Since then two of the chocolates have slipped down the back.

Some people think that Cocteau Twins' version of Frosty The Snowman is on the twee side of things. They might be right.

Sometime in the 1920s Loretta Young hangs up a big wreath. Two more sleeps everyone.

Frosty The Snowman

Pete Wylie's Imperfect List

'Adolf Hitler, the dentist, Terry and June...'

In 1990 this 12" came out on One Little Indian, a list of bad stuff, credited to Big Hard Excellent Fish.

'...fucking bastard Thatcher, Scouse impersonator, silly pathetic girlies, macho dickhead...'

It was shrouded in mystery, the chewy Scouse vocal incorrectly said by some to be actress Margi Clarke. It came with four versions, produced and remixed by Andrew Weatherall (Rimming Elvis The Andrew Weatherall Way read the sleeve).

'...lost keys, Stock Aitken and Waterman, smiling Judas, heartbreaking lying friend...'

The voice belonged to Wylie's then girlfriend Josie Jones and the track was written and recorded by an uncredited Pete Wylie along with Cocteau Twin Robin Guthrie.

'...The Sun newspaper, acid rain, AIDS inventor, Leon Britton, weird British judges, the breakdown of the NHS, Heysel stadium, homelessness, John Lennon's murder, anyone's murder...'

In 2004 Morrissey used it to arrive on stage to.

'...tasteless A&R wanker, the Jimmy Swaggart Show, Clause 28, Nelson Mandela's imprisonment, miscarriage...'

This is the lead version, seven minutes forty five seconds long.

'...where were you?'

The Imperfect List (Version 1)

I Did All My Best To Smile

The most famous cover version of Tim Buckley's Song To The Siren (and there are many) was by This Mortal Coil, a 4AD band. Described on wiki as a 'gothic dream pop supergroup' This Mortal Coil were label boss Ivo Watts-Russell and John Fryer, with a rotating cast of 4AD musicians including The Cocteau Twins Liz Fraser and Robin Guthrie. Song To the Siren was just Guthrie and Fraser. It was a massive independent hit in 80s Britain and deservedly so. It's a ghostly, spectral, 'gothic dream pop' cover version that surely even people that don't like The Cocteau Twins must be impressed by.

Song To The Siren (This Mortal Coil)