Cocteau Twins – Four-Calendar Café + Milk & Kisses (1993,1996 Remastered) (2024)
Review:
Cocteau Twins reissued their final two albums — 1993’s Four-Calendar Café and 1996’s Milk & Kisses. Both records were originally released on Capitol Records in the North America and Fontana in the UK, but these reissues are out via 4AD, the label they were signed to for most of their ’80s/’90s run and always felt like their natural home. Guitarist Robin Guthrie went back to his original studio mixes for these reissues for new 24-bit masters of both. Whether it was the departure from 4AD (some fans were not happy), trying to follow a masterpiece like 1990’s Heaven or Las Vegas, the romantic split of Guthrie and Elizabeth Fraser or other factors, these two albums were a bit undervalued at the time, but both have grown better with age. Four-Calendar Café was a natural progression from Heaven or Las Vegas, with Fraser moving even further into intelligible lyrics, Guthrie spinning crystalline guitar webs, and Simon Raymonde tying it all together via masterful bass-playing and other instrumentation. It was apparently a difficult album to make with Guthrie and Fraser splitting up in the middle of it, but it sounds effortless. Milk & Kisses, meanwhile, finds Guthrie turning up his amps for what is the loudest Cocteaus album since the mid-’80s. It was also a much more civil recording experience than Four-Calendar Café, with all three members in the studio together and working well with each other. The record suffered from a muddy mix at the time, but the sonics have been improved with recent reissues. —
brooklynvegan.com
Track List:
Disc 1 - Four-Calendar Café (1993 Remastered 2024)
01 - Know Who You Are At Every Age (2024 Remaster)
02 - Evangeline (2024 Remaster)
03 - Bluebeard (2024 Remaster)
04 - Theft, And Wandering Around Lost (2024 Remaster)
05 - Oil of Angels (2024 Remaster)
06 - Squeeze-Wax (2024 Remaster)
07 - My Truth (2024 Remaster)
08 - Essence (2024 Remaster)
09 - Summerhead (2024 Remaster)
10 - Pur (2024 Remaster)
Disc 2 - Milk & Kisses (1996 Remastered 2024)
01 - Violaine (2024 Remaster)
02 - Serpentskirt (2024 Remaster)
03 - Tishbite (2024 Remaster)
04 - Half-Gifts (2024 Remaster)
05 - Calfskin Smack (2024 Remaster)
06 - Rilkean Heart (2024 Remaster)
07 - Ups (2024 Remaster)
08 - Eperdu (2024 Remaster)
09 - Treasure Hiding (2024 Remaster)
10 - Seekers Who Are Lovers (2024 Remaster)
Media Report:
Genre: dream-pop
Country: Grangemouth, Scotland
Format: FLAC
Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec
Bit rate mode: Variable
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossless
Writing library: libFLAC 1.2.1 (UTC 2007-09-17)
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