View Full Version : Cocteau Twins and emotions
stargazer
Sep-1-06, 2:27 AM
I'm listening to the remaster Victorialand for the first time in a while. Its just sublime. Probably one of the best CT albums in my opinion. It moves me in a way that I can only describe as spiritual. Which Cocteau Twins album or song brings out the most emotion in you, if any?
That one! And I'm always glad to hear it moves someone in the same way it does me.
stargazer
Sep-1-06, 2:41 AM
That's good to know. It's also good to know that someone else is touched by this music in the same way I am. Sometimes when I hear a song like Aikea Guinea it feels like being in love or something. Its crazy!
andylama
Sep-1-06, 2:52 AM
Nothing crazy about it. It is the openness to behold beauty.
mmmender
Sep-1-06, 2:52 AM
Each album brings out different emotions in me. Victorialand is so soothing, it has a calming effect. While 4CC makes me feel closer to Liz's state of mind and pain. HOLV makes me happy for some reason although it has its share of soul searching tracks. The title track in particular, while its subject matter is wholly otherwise, I find that it excites me to no end. Also from the same album is the track CCF which makes me feel virtually ill, I simply can't take that track at all. Right up there with that song is Serpentskirt from M&K, it's another song that makes me wish my favourite band hadn't written such terrible tracks. I always skip these 2 songs in particular. Garlands makes me reminisce about my twenties and induces rhythmic movements in me. Dancing is the first order at hand when I listen to Tiny Dynamine/Echoes, EPs full of songs that make me sway about no matter where I am or what I'm doing. I could go on about this all day but I'll stop here.
stargazer
Sep-1-06, 3:00 AM
The openness to behold beauty? That's a great way to explain it. Yeah, each album brings out different emotions in myself as well. I know it's not really cocteau twins but for some reason the moon and the melodies makes me depressed. When I listen to any of the other albums though, I just feel elated or peaceful. It's quite nice.
nightraven
Sep-1-06, 6:20 AM
"Crushed" makes me feel incredibly vulnerable for example. But to be totally honest, I must say I receive their music through colours mostly, with images in my head, the whole palette in front of my eyes.
That's why I can't stop listening to Heaven Or Las Vegas or Milk And Kisses... Each and every record makes me wanna feel again... simply feel.
musette and drums, tinderbox, bbk
Baddy2shoos
Sep-1-06, 6:37 AM
For the first time yesterday, I stopped a CT track before the end, anybody wanna guess which track? I'll think of a prize...
mike_mhg
Sep-1-06, 6:46 AM
Glass Candle Grenades
Baddy2shoos
Sep-1-06, 6:52 AM
Wrong
fornasetti
Sep-1-06, 7:25 AM
For the first time yesterday, I stopped a CT track before the end, anybody wanna guess which track? I'll think of a prize...
Did you manage to stop Kookaburra ?
Victorialand is like a doorway to another world for me. Like a portal to an alternate reality that consists of beauty only. There are the more obvious mental pictures of ice plains and polar sunshine but mostly I don't have any mental pictures or they are so abstract they do not bear description. I don't listen to this album, I experience it (well, when I am in the right mood). I don't play it very often because I don't want to 'wear it out' mentally.
Baddy2shoos
Sep-1-06, 7:33 AM
no and no
Baddy2shoos
Sep-1-06, 10:39 AM
Ok it was Bluebeard, one of my favourites
I know it's not CT, but Song To The Siren still makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up even after all these years.
fornasetti
Sep-1-06, 10:58 AM
Garlands makes me hop around and pretend I can play bass.
HoH makes me sing along.
Treasure cheers me up.
Victorialand relaxes me.
TMATM does much the same.
BBK thrills me and I usually have to play it twice, as nothing else can really follow it.
HOLV makes me frustrated because it has some great songs but is so uneven in its quality.
FCC makes me want to go and do something else - like stab my eyeballs with a sharpened pencil - for greater amusement.
M&K cheers me up, because there was a good album to end with and it helps me not to think of FCC.
Baddy2shoos
Sep-1-06, 11:00 AM
With all CT albums you have to be in the right mood to listen to them.
Ok it was Bluebeard, one of my favourites
i wanted to guess it!
I'm listening to the remaster Victorialand for the first time in a while. Its just sublime. Probably one of the best CT albums in my opinion. It moves me in a way that I can only describe as spiritual. Which Cocteau Twins album or song brings out the most emotion in you, if any?
CT is easily the most emotional music I have ever heard. The last time I got worked up was when I heard the Victorialand remaster for the first time in my car. It sounded so beautiful it brought a tear to my eye, right around the point where the bass comes in on "Lazy Calm" and the song gently takes off . . .
Their version of Frosty the Snowman always makes me well up. It evokes a longing for the innocence of childhood and simpler times, but perhaps it is more of a longing for something that never existed. Many of my best childhood memories are about times I was alone, which, I think is kind of sad.
Rilkean Heart makes me want to destroy everthing. I really dislike the song.
Have you heard the remastered "Rilkean Heart," Ken? I used to hate that song too but the new version sounds like a quite different mix and now I love it
Have you heard the remastered "Rilkean Heart," Ken? I used to hate that song too but the new version sounds like a quite different mix and now I love it
It's the lyrics - they drive me insane.
aeonaside
Sep-1-06, 5:35 PM
hmmm. everything really does do something different for everyone.
I'm trying to think of how I want to describe how certain songs make me feel but words just fall short. For me, music is a religion in it of itself, having the strongest means of expressing emotion. Words often get in the way. The most powerful Cocteau Twins songs to me tend to be the ones that are glossolalia or a foreign language. Cocteau Twins are a reigning deity in my universe.
A couple years ago I had this idea of writing a book on rock and roll as a religion/spirituality itself, not just one aspect of spiritual practice. Ugh I'm grasping at straws here...
I've gone through all emotions listening to CT. In particular, I remember just before the BBC Sessions came out seeing someone on TV recite the words to "Strange Fruit" on the BBC's National Poetry Day (I think it was Desiree). I'd never heard the song but the words stuck in my mind and when I got that CD and listened to that song on the way home I was weeping buckets.
What stirs me now is listening to their live stuff and seeing Liz sing! Thank God for YouTube!! I mean, just watching her sing "Ella Megalast" on SNUB TV, and seeing how happy she looks makes me want to explode with joy and happiness
aeonaside
Sep-1-06, 11:05 PM
Thank God for YouTube!! I mean, just watching her sing "Ella Megalast" on SNUB TV, and seeing how happy she looks makes me want to explode with joy and happiness
is that video not still out of sync?
is that video not still out of sync?
That's "Orange Appled", and it's still out of sync.
I'm listening to the remaster Victorialand for the first time in a while. Its just sublime. Probably one of the best CT albums in my opinion. It moves me in a way that I can only describe as spiritual. Which Cocteau Twins album or song brings out the most emotion in you, if any?
Victorialand for me too
Thackeray
Sep-2-06, 11:25 AM
Mmmender have you written more extensively on this subject? In a journal? Article or thread? If you have can you share or PM me something to read?
Each album brings out different emotions in me. Victorialand is so soothing, it has a calming effect. While 4CC makes me feel closer to Liz's state of mind and pain. HOLV makes me happy for some reason although it has its share of soul searching tracks. The title track in particular, while its subject matter is wholly otherwise, I find that it excites me to no end. Also from the same album is the track CCF which makes me feel virtually ill, I simply can't take that track at all. Right up there with that song is Serpentskirt from M&K, it's another song that makes me wish my favourite band hadn't written such terrible tracks. I always skip these 2 songs in particular. Garlands makes me reminisce about my twenties and induces rhythmic movements in me. Dancing is the first order at hand when I listen to Tiny Dynamine/Echoes, EPs full of songs that make me sway about no matter where I am or what I'm doing. I could go on about this all day but I'll stop here.
kookaburra
Sep-2-06, 11:26 AM
Isn't that the winning essay?
When I listen to Victorialand, Treasure and the Pink Opaque, I'm reminded of my late high school/early college days when I was getting into those records and listening to them constantly. It was a time of discovery in my life, particularly my early college days - learning new things in my classes, new things about myself, meeting new people, etc. Underneath all that was a pervading feeling of sadness that I couldn't identify. Now I realize it came from my homelife and was basically a feeling of sadness about the things I was missing - emotional support, kindness, the ability to develop a support system of friends in my new environment. So I plugged myself into my headphones and listened to a lot of Cocteau music, particularly those 3 records. They seemed to speak to both my feelings of sadness and discovery; "happy/sad" in-between feelings which were intensified by the music, and I only knew how to tolerate when I was in my Cocteau daze.
petroldarling
Sep-2-06, 2:51 PM
blue bell knoll is one of the most soothing things for me, i used to listen to it when i had really severe panic episodes and it would really help me.
The naaa-naaa-na-naa part in Fotzepolitic makes me feel really good.
*gives Victorialand another shot to try to understand what the whole fuss is about*
Do you understand now, Moe?
hmm it was ok... i actually just played the whole thing through.
i wish there was more oomph. it's too still it makes me fall asleep.
aeonaside
Sep-2-06, 5:09 PM
it's too still it makes me fall asleep.
So let it lull you to sleep!
thats part of the beauty of Victorialand... its so soothing and relaxing.
petroldarling
Sep-2-06, 5:47 PM
moe, it took me about two years of being totally crazy for cocteau twins before i started to 'get' victorialand. i even wrote a paper for my first year of college about how it wasn't challenging listening in the slightest! after awhile i just kind of settled into it's brilliance. i didn't like it for a long time, literally forgot it existed, and then one day i realized how perfect it is! it's a really strange and great record.
So let it lull you to sleep!
thats part of the beauty of Victorialand... its so soothing and relaxing.
no didn't mean that in a good way. it makes me fall asleep in the way that my boring social and historical inquiry teacher would knock me out every time he started lecturing.
anyway i'm beginning to see what many of you appreciate. i just don't think it's CT sound I appreciate... But who knows alli maybe it will grow on me too :D
i wish there was more oomph. it's too still it makes me fall asleep.
Welcome to the club Moe. I fear we are a minority however :)
Rascuache
Sep-2-06, 8:45 PM
The song I enjoy the most is Half-Gifts, specifically the version off of twinlights.
Welcome to the club Moe. I fear we are a minority however :)
you're also a fan of Garlands, if I recall correctly??
kookaburra
Sep-2-06, 10:09 PM
Y'all are sappy.
I love both Victorialand and Garlands for different reasons. Victorialand is a very calming and deeply sad/wistful record for me. It helps me get in touch with feelings of sadness and loneliness, but just allows me to feel them, without requiring any action. Garlands is bleak, scary, dark and a little cold. I feel like Liz couldn't keep her voice inside her and had to get it out, but she was kind of afraid of it at the same time. When I listen to Garlands, I feel angry, powerful, bleak and uplifted. It makes me feel like a very powerful but angry woman - Xena Warrior Princess with PMS.
aeonaside
Sep-2-06, 11:11 PM
Y'all are sappy.
you don't like Victorialand i take it
it wasn't challenging listening in the slightest!
I'd say that Victorialand is the MOST challenging record in the CT catalogue. It takes focus, concentration to really get it. Most people say it relaxes them, but it doesn't work that way for me. I really have to 'crawl inside' this record. It's not easy listening.
kookaburra
Sep-3-06, 1:20 AM
you don't like Victorialand i take it
Yes, I do.
aeonaside
Sep-3-06, 3:05 AM
Yes, I do.
you fuckin sappy pussy!
kookaburra
Sep-3-06, 3:40 AM
For liking Victorialand?
nightraven
Jul-16-07, 4:00 PM
It makes me feel like a very powerful but angry woman - Xena Warrior Princess with PMS.
:lol: That was lovely.
And I agree with you. Garlands has some twisted energy inside.
spangled
Jul-20-07, 8:10 AM
Welcome to the club Moe. I fear we are a minority however :)
I'm with you guys.
randomrob
Jul-20-07, 10:47 AM
TM&TM for me...
moody, oceanic, with plenty of sparkle. An organic flow to it that I didn't find on any of their other albums.
One of the 2 or 3 albums I can listen to from start to finish anymore.
lucynow
Jul-21-07, 8:55 PM
Orange Appled - Happy, happy song
I Wear Your Ring - Really uplifting at the end
Spangle Maker - Don't want it to stop
Rilkean Heart, Sea Swallow Me, Crushed - Just gorgeous
crivens200
Jul-23-07, 2:30 AM
CT is easily the most emotional music I have ever heard. The last time I got worked up was when I heard the Victorialand remaster for the first time in my car. It sounded so beautiful it brought a tear to my eye, right around the point where the bass comes in on "Lazy Calm" and the song gently takes off . . .
Yup - that bit is pure heaven for me. Lying in a hot bath, lights out and Victorialand on.
vBulletin® v3.8.2, Copyright ©2000-2012, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.