One of the great things about a band with the longevity and prolificness as Cocteau Twins is that even 25 years after they disbanded, there is still more of their music to be discovered. The flip side of that is that finding this new music can be maddening.
For example, the song “Crushed”, which appears on their website video gallery alongside the other official promo singles, but which is actually a very niche release that’s hard to find if you don’t know where to look. It originally appeared on the 1987 4AD label compilation Lonely Is An Eyesore – the video was for the accompanying VHS release – and was included on a bonus disc in their 1991 box set Cocteau Twins Singles Collection, which gathered up all the EPs from their tenure on the label.
However, those four bonus tracks were nowhere to be found on 2005’s Lullabies To Violaine set, which added the band’s Fontana EPs to the Singles Collection tracks for an almost-comprehensive compilation. “Crushed” isn’t lost to the physical collections of collectors, though. A digital only entity called Cocteau Twins Singles Collection EP exists on streaming services just to make sure those four bonus tracks are available for all to hear. Very kind.
In 2013, as part of their “Old Music” series, The Guardian celebrated the song and the video’s encapsulation of the band’s otherworldly nature:
The video glistens at you, with the band appearing like aliens in the mist, fresh from whatever spaceship they’d been in that day. Hands move across instruments out of time, displaced from their own creations, as if the music itself has been set free from any form of governance. Liz Fraser’s unnerving eyes take on even more profound depths of ungraspable poignancy, rendering any attempt at understanding the words coming out of her mouth pointless (yet I am reliably informed they are thus: “Fein Funnel Fresh aches/ Honey they’re losing me/thistle follow/ Will he see a ya ya ya ya/thistle fresh aches”. All I can say is – I hope not).
Old music: Cocteau Twins – Crushed @ The Guardian
