Much ballyhoo was tossed around as these notoriously enigmatic speaking in tongues, glossolalic 4AD'ers incorporated more identifiable English words into their lyrics, the apparent "Cherry Coke" in "Iceblink Luck" and "I lost myself identified" opener to Four Calendar Cafe Here, we shall attempt faithful, all-English renditions of more impenetrable early gems.

I'm aware there are at least 25 ueber-geek websites where this project has been undertaken by pillow-biting graduate students with quasi-academic rigor. Those guys are fags.

I'll get us started with 1984's "The Spangle Maker" from the EP of the same name

The Spanglemaker

It's the droplets
It's the droplet on the tufa
It's the spangle
It's the Spanglemaker
All for that, all for that where to chair it Etta
She is innocent
She's the spangle baby

A rest space (respite?) shows the droplet
Sanguine
Broken window, broken window
We're so alone (repeat X 2)

It's caught up when it on Paul pen yah
It started and a then Paul married yah (little help here)
Oh yeah it's just the droplets sanguine
Broken winter now we're so alone yeah

I don't care what the fuck she's singing. I love that song.

"Aloysius"

in shadow
a smiling man
a pox, a gloom, sea horse

good thread

The first couplet is a stretch, but I really like your gloss on "a pox, a gloom, sea horse." I think the first two lines are more like "Shimmy Shimmy, she's on the side of the road"

Don't forget the opening lines, though.

"Summer Summer saliva
Summer sashimi"

"Feathers-Oars-Blades" leadoff track from 1982's Lullabies EP.

Afoot
And light
Her face, they're haters <-----(note possible influence on Chamillionaire)

Van Foot
Van Hunts (X2)

Crystal
Me keg
Clearfor
They're pedestals (pistils? pestoes?)
A crystal
Creeeee-ate

Feathers-Oar-Blades
Skater
They're feathers
Spitting out Oar Blades
Spitting out Oar blades

La la la la la

Aspen
With you
Playboy has no bracelets
Oh graceful (crystal?)
Wee hen

Oar-blade
to tartar
Gear sheds have his party
He saw lens, he tartar
He saw lens, he tartar

Spitting out Oar Blades
Spitting out Oar Blades

haha, I'm game.

"I wear your ring" from heaven or las vegas

don't feed on, between the sunrise and sunset
you're down no panickee and all the re-e-e-dddd...
is on a run on the turf...

you could be reason monday with your manna
you might be shot when you're round to dress
up and faint...

take a toast to that and ride along...

Nice!!! That's the spirit, Ackbar! You picked a tough one. Here's a stab at the chorus and break on that one:

Needless and nine
(Please can I be)
Needlessly fine
Meetings so useful
He's so useful
Affection me

(break)
Beautiful heads on snowy eyes
All knees of love on socks and dark star
And bare, oh
The answer's red, and then I reason
The river sticks for more than speaks to me
It's a dirty, fetching blue

Blue Bell Knoll is one of the toughest nuts to crack. Here's a valiant honest effort at one of Vivian's favorites, "Suckling the Mender."

Suckling the Mender

Are you
done, awl?
How now, hollow
drug source?
See that, see that
Fair lawn
Feed ya, feed duh
Dee gone

Leaving and a goal
Beauty and perfume your
Teenage said before
Beauty and perfume your
Teenage said for you

(LOL at her Mariah Carey antics in the second verse when you hear it as "drug source")

Another cryptic one, this time the title track to the 1986 Love's Easy Tears EP.

Love's Easy Tears

Lung model
She gotta go home
She owns the sin
Lung throttle
She oughta go home

She held on just long enough
Ok that's how
Drawn in shown fuss
All thrown in
That's how long for low
She held on
Dory, your rose is sin

"Five Ten Fiftyfold" from 1983's Head Over Heels

Wheezing and sneezing
Embolden little car
You've had to be had
With gushing girl's way

Five, ten, fiftyfold X 2

Wheezing and sneezing
he had to leave her
By taking the fall
With gushing girl's way

Five, ten, fiftyfold X 2

Wheezing and sneezing
Turn a cold into a cough
When gushing girls winter
Just up the north

Wheezing and sneezing
It had to live fast
By taking the fall
With gushing girl's way

Five, ten, fiftyfold X 5 (i.e. Twentyfive, Fifty, Two Hundred and Fiftyfold)

Wheezing and sneezing and sneezing and wheezing and sneezing and sneezing and wheezing and sneezing and sneezing and wheezing and sneezing and...

Five, ten, fiftyfold X 4

1985's "Aikea-Guinea" presents formidable problems in transcription.

Aikea-Guinea

When the leash
has a day
And they really had it net-free

And I wish, there's enough
That they really had to make me

Oh, please...please

There's a way to remain
Insecure just after jet farm
(so all the keys from the spray
are red and novel enough)

Edit: Doesn't anyone want to play?

span.gle, n. v -n 1. a small, thin, often circular piece of glittering metal or other material, used. esp for decorating garments. 2. Any small, bright object, spot, drop or the like, 4. v.t. to decorate with spangles, 5. to sprinkle or stud with small, bright pieces, objects, 6. v.i. to glitter with or like spangles.

frit.il.lar.y, n., pl. any of several orange-brown nymphalid butterflies, usually marked with black lines and dots and with silvery spots on the undersides of the wings.

"Throughout the dark months of April and May," Victorialand, 1986.

Wipe off the chair
Oh
I'll unpack Jethro
Oh
Feasting again
Oh
Wrap this thing nicely
Oh
Feast every age

Now we have me
Oh
Secreted time
Oh
Unpack my Legos
Oh
Burying me
Oh
Feast every age

Eely * law, suits your law are you never?
Costume now, boss or car or more wet now
(Crown defend these rules he bought)
Not all argue like nobody tell her
Orchid keen air, or graph on the yacht, huh?
Festival he said he'd only lead her

Oh
Coolie incense
Oh
I reach my save bone
Oh
Singer incensed
Oh
Trace of the several

Oh
Doctors see more
Oh
Dock tea most -issimo, -issimo, -issmo

* Eeely, adj. eellike; wriggling (another possibility is Il y a, French for "there is")

In all seriousness, this is a really, really lovely song. Wow. I'd forgotten how good this acoustic stuff is.

Now where's the thread for Enya?

Good thread. Oustanding thread title.

The indignant and discerning frou-frou lover in me wants you to take that back

Thread should be higher, IMO

Thread is higher.

Don't get me wrong, I actually like Enya.

I don't honestly know her stuff all that well, except for "Orinoco Flow." (probably Hugo Chavez' theme song these days). I know that, as a Cocteaumaniac, I'm supposed to love her, but I don't, somehow.

That one goes "sail away, sail away, sail away." Beyond that, you're on your own. I doubt that she will achieve levels of nonsequitur poetry along the lines of "Playboy has no bracelets," though.

This weird obsessive exercise of mine is kind of fun, actually. Don't know if it's what they meant us to hear, but my transcription of the break on "I wear your ring," following up on Ackbar's Yeoman's work on the verse, actually yields some nice, Sexton-esque poetry.

"Garlands," title cut from 1982's brooding, post-punky Joy Division-esque masterpiece of the same name.

Garlands

Garlands evergreen
Forget it, and not beads
Traversing his row
I could die in a rosary X 4

Well with these swift colors
We never find out, we never find all
Well with these sunshapes
(Lady's carved in)
My crevice carves out

Well with these dark stars
Well with these pink stars
I'm all glad too

I'll say it too...great thread, vivian!

Singing along to cocteau twins was always sort of a joke between my friends and me back in the day.

"Musette and Drums," Head Over Heels, 1983 (though many dabblers know it as the last track on The Pink Opaque, sort of the Cocteau Twins' answer to Bob Marley's Legend).

Musette* and Drums

The giddy Id
You fast-forward genius
Nor Indian
We're genius too, oh
All the song
The favorite genius
Sword, that is
So duck it in awe

Tragedy, yay!
Love is an A-note
Tragedy, Yay!
Love isn't enough

Musette and drums
I lost the genius
Sword, that is
So duck it in awe

Wrote the song
Your favorite genius

Musette and Drums
The law genius, too
The law genius, too

*mu.sette n., pl. 1. a French bagpipe of the 17th and early 18th centuries, with several chambers and drones, and with the wind supplied by a bellows rather than a blowpipe. 2. a woodwind instrument similar to but smaller than a shawm, 3. a short musical piece with a drone bass, often forming the middle section of a gavotte.

the devil bites dirty
we wax and wane
the devil bites dirty
we wax and wane.


sorry. that's all I got. but it's Robin Guthrie confirmed.

I can't believe I just witnessed this thread.

This band is so putrid, I'd say I might prefer listening to Air Supply.

These lyrics are so retarded. Oh my GOD.

HILARIOUS





HOLY CRAP



I am LAUGHING OUT LOUD.

LOL will not cut it!

i'd like to choke off your air supply.

I don't think MCF "gets it."

Interesting. Never heard of a member of the band "confirming" their lyrical content. In interviews, Liz was notoriously coy and evasive about it, usually inviting the listener to draw their own conclusions. Indeed, that's kind of the germ seed of the goof that is this thread.

For my own part, I've always heard that couplet as "The Devil might steadily wax and wane."

The Deftones cover this tune on their B-Sides and rarities compilation. In the liner notes, Chino writes: "These lyrics were a bitch to figure out, but then again, so are mine."

Certainly not....

nope. hasn't got a clue.

carry on, boys...

"Crushed," unreleased track from 1987 4AD sampler compilation Lonely is an Eyesore.

Crushed

for MCF

Fame
Fond of
Face saves
Are we the rose they play?
Think so (face saves)
Oho
The itsy yada yada dots
Think so face saves
The lacy dada, dada now

Are you chancing sun in turns of emotion?
Love your dancing sun in turrets of emotion
She swims out

I always forget this tune. Truly one of their great swirly bubblegum pop gems.

Another thing I've noticed is that Liz often changes inflection slightly from verse to verse. It's clear she knows what she's singing and that there are "lyrics," but any given line can sound very different from verse to verse, or even within a refrain or couplet. Hence the chorus about chancing v. dancing suns.

I love this song and I have that cd. It's actually a pretty good compilation. Or at least I thought so back in the day. It's been awhile.

Pink Orange Red74 (hey look, cocteauhumour! )

More Cocteauhumor:

What do you call an ambivalent member of Cirque du Soleil?

A Fifty-fifty clown

What do the Cocteau Twins, Clan of Xymox, Dif Juz, and rogue states Iran and North Korea have in common?

They're all members of the "axis of Ivo."

What alternative, but similar Cocteau Twins-inspired band name did stoner hip-hoppers Cypress Hill consider as their moniker?

Green Bowl Knoll

haha.

nerds.

Guilty as charged. I actually consider that a compliment. Nerds make better lovers. (see Revenge of the Nerds, 1984)

"Know Who You are at Every Age," lovely track from 1993's underappreciated Four Calendar Cafe. (this is the first album where critics claimed to hear all sorts of English. While there are some words to grab on to, it's still a fool's errand trying to decode the mystery; as AS Byatt once said, the music is a "grey mist, in which float or can be discerned odd glimpses of solid objects, odd bits of glitter of domes or shadows of roofs in the gloom.")

Know Who You Are at Every Age

The sin stays hard
Deduct it too
The script disorder
Deserves such hills
That behind the slush that laid the stuff on me

I'm not real
and I've been mired
I won't heal
unless I cry
I can't grieve, so I won't go
I want you 'til I let it go

And not real, deny deny
I won't heal unless I cry

(Cry, cry, cry 'til you know why
I lost myself identified) X 2

While I love this tune (and also "Squeeze-Wax" and "Summerhead," the latter a great old school moment that could be off of Head over Heels/Snowburst and Starblind), there are moments on this album, I must say, where I actually wish they'd left the lyrics a mystery. I color to think, for example, of the undeniably English chorus on "Bluebeard":

Are you the right man for me?
Or are you toxic for me?

Thank God

Bump for promising young scholars like spiritofeden and newgrass

Thread's much more fun when you play along at home

how awsome is this song?

anwser : very.

There are still days when I seriously think that Garlands is their best record. No shit.

Edit: Which is to say, the post-punky, dark post -Siouxsie vibe that prevails throughout this is awesome and drone-edgy and to be treasured, but I still find myself really missing Simon Raymonde's languid menace bass guitar.

Sugar hiccup, sugar hiccup, sugar hiccup-ohohohohoh.

sugar hiccup from ho-ho's?

Sugar hiccup, OH! Cheerios!!

Listening to "Serpentskirt" from Milk and Kisses this AM, I could have sworn I heard Liz exhort me to "throw away the shitty quiche."