Cocteau Twins — Tiny Dynamine/Echoes in a Shallow Bay
Qobuz catalog review (April 2021)
Unlike perhaps any other act of the era, the Cocteau Twins’ ’80s discography is one that is as defined by its EP releases as it is by its full-length albums. Of the eight EPs the band released over the course of the decade, only one (Sunburst and Snowblind) was a “single” in the sense that it featured an album track and some additional material. All of the rest, from Lullabies through Love’s Easy Tears were conceived, recorded, and released as standalone creations, individual statements as fully realized as the longer albums they were interspersed between. Among those individual statements, however, two EPs have always been clearly connected. Tiny Dynamine and Echoes in a Shallow Bay were released two weeks apart in November 1985 (between the release of the Treasure and Victorialand albums), shared similar conceptual themes (butterflies!) and artwork, and, more explicitly, resulted from the same recording sessions. Using a studio on loan from William Orbit, the Twins set down these tracks not with the purpose of recording a new album, but simply to figure out what could and could not be done with the new equipment at their disposal. Thus, these two EPs have lived their lives together — “like a brother and sister,” according to Robin Guthrie — even being released together as a mini-LP at the height of the CD era and now, being permanently canonized as one conjoined release in the group’s hi-res discography. Sitting both temporally and stylistically at the exact midpoint of the baroque dynamism of Treasure and the spacious, percussion-free quasi-ambience of Victorialand, the collective eight tracks are, in all likelihood, the exact sound that’s conjured in your head when someone says “Cocteau Twins.” Guthrie’s overdriven and overdubbed guitars wring feedback into thickly layered atmospheres and Simon Raymonde’s warm, dubby basslines provide an anchor, while Elizabeth Fraser’s voice sings unfamiliar words that may or may not be about anything, but are nonetheless deeply effective and highly melodic. And while the recipe is unmistakably what the group is associated with, this particular presentation is unique in their canon. Managing to be both ethereal and forceful, there’s a mid-tempo tension to these songs; they wobble between gorgeous soundscapes and melodramatic melodies. While Guthrie’s piano-like guitar work on “Melonella” points to a future collaboration with Harold Budd, and the elegant simplicity of “Eggs and Their Shells” makes it one of the group’s most direct and beautiful numbers, these two EPs are best taken together, as a whole. © Jason Ferguson/Qobuz
