Heaven or Las Vegas

Another band I've heard of but never listened to. Not what I expected. Dreamy, shoegazey layers with captivating vocals riding on top. I like this more than I expected I would.

I was surprised at the date of this one as I associate there Cocteau Twins with the 80’s.
This was alot of… nothing. Airiness with no energy. Very difficult to tell one track from the next. It didn’t hurt to listen to it so I’ll give it two stars, but if it were up to me I wouldn’t include this album on this list at all.

Giving this a 4 but the gap between 4 and 5 is razor thin. Brilliant album, the female vocalist in particular has an amazing voice.

As someone who used to live in Grangemouth, Cocteau Twins are the biggest thing ever to come out of that town apart from refined petrochemicals and the M9 motorway in either direction....

Meh, not bad, but nothing to write home about?

Harmonic beautiful and atmospheric, sets such a magical joyful mood

This album... was restorative. After a rough night's sleep and a general feeling of anxiousnesses that pervaded my day, listening to this whisked me away to drift amongst the clouds. It is an ethereal, beautiful experience. But its relaxing vibes are also the biggest critique I can give it: there's no single track that stood out as the definitive iconic song.

Really pleasant and nice

Finally getting the hype with this one on the 25th attempt. It's always been somewhat alienating to me and hard to connect with, despite lots of people insisting I'd like it. Not sure why, maybe it's having listened to lots of 80s/90s UK indie pop and shoegaze over the last year for whatever reason, or that this is a remaster that's a bit easier on the ears, but this is way more accessible, the hazy high-end that always pushed me away isn't there and the songs themselves come through way more than ever before and the individual instruments' contributions stand out more clearly. There's a nice combination of Cure-esque basslines driving the songs, jangly shimmering guitars washed in an ethereal bath of reverb delay and modulation effects, big echoey 80s drums, some synth tones, and hushed alto vocals that start with a whisper and resonate, echo, double up and harmonize into something huge. Slow and spacious, mopey and hopeful, dreamily malingering in misery, this is almost as good as everyone's been saying!

It was fine. I didn’t hate it, it just didn’t grab me.

Probably my favorite Cocteau Twins album. I can’t get enough of this ethereal dream pop shoegaze band.

A beautifully rich album. IDK wtf they're saying half the time and it somehow doesn't matter in the slightest.

I'd heard of this band, but never listened to it before. Really solid dreamy synth pop. Had me engaged the whole way through.

Maybe one day I will appreciate this band more. Today is not that day.

3/5

Angelic. I loved it

Naaah this ain't it. 1.4

forever fave <3

I’m at a 3.5 that I’ll bump up to a 4.

Gotta tell you – not used to an album without proper lyrics. I just don’t know that I could personally give a 5 to an album with vocals, but without lyrics, simply because I’m a sucker for storytelling… but I think a 4 means the album was pretty damn good regardless. And this was pretty damn good.

Sometimes, soundscapes do make an album, and even though this is a 1990 album, it’s very much the dying gasp of the 1980s in full effect – everything here is a sort of pastiche on every 80s trope and style you could think of musically, and it comes together really well. Vocally, I think she’s got a mesmerizing tone to her voice that usually meshes pretty well with the instrumentals, but occasionally, I think the production blends them together too harshly on some tracks where it just kinda negates the positives of both.

That’s not to say there’s any bad tracks here, just some suspect mixing – this is even more of a car album than the last one was, but it’s honestly more of a dreaming album to me (I guess that’s why it’s “dream pop”). I could easily see myself falling asleep to these, or even dreaming up something close to these – good soundscapes with lyrics just out of reach, but the occasionally clear word or two to keep you a little grounded to reality.

I just had fun with it – I can’t wax too much about it because the extent of my criticism is “that sounded really good, but sometimes it didn’t,” and that’s kindergarten-level criticism. It’s a very nice listen; it sounds great, it’s relaxing as hell, and while it does go a little bit too long, I think it doesn’t overstay its welcome long enough to be actively annoying. I’m fine with bumping it up to a 4.

My sister took me to see them in Paris in the Summer of ‘96. It was my first ever concert and I was completely enchanted. This record captures all their ethereal majesty in its most iconic and accessible form.

Estos discos siempre estuvieron en mi lista de la compra en su época, pero eran difíciles de encontrar en las tiendas de música que tenía a mano y pedirlos por correos no recuerdo que fuera posible. Desconozco si eran tiradas muy cortas o solo eran de importación. Hasta que no llegó el digital no pude disfrutarlos. Entiendo que habrá gente que no los aprecie, es un sonido y unas vocalizaciones muy particulares. Para guardar: "Cherry-Coloured Funk", "Iceblink Luck" y "Heaven or Las Vegas".