Episode 56: Cocteau Twins's "Heaven or Las Vegas"

Dream of ethereal waves of sound swirling around you—and words you can’t make out saying more than you could imagine—as you float back upstream with us toward the warmth of Cocteau Twins’ decade-defining masterpiece, which still ripples across a vast pool of influences 25 years on.

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Episode Transcript

Kyle (00:00):
Today we're talking about Heaven or Las Vegas by the Cocteau Twins.

Cliff (00:03):
So we usually don't have, uh, episode to episode linear narrative
or connection, that's sort ofthe point of picking a bunch of
different albums like we tend to do.
But we not only have some of thatthis time, uh, I feel like this in
and of itself is a pretty classictune dig focused album in the sense

(00:25):
that on one hand, we can talk allday about how interesting this
piece of music is in isolation.
Like we can talk about the thing itself,but then it's another one of those Morty's
mind blowers of downstream impacts oneverything where it's like, we could
basically fill 12 hours talking bothabout the thing itself, uh, and then

(00:48):
every other cool thing that we startednoticing that happened probably as a
result of this album existing at all.
And it makes me love our ability toconnect a few dots in, uh, particular
moment in time in the nineties fromJeff Buckley to this one but be able
to speak to the alicized impact of twopretty different genres of music actually

(01:10):
coming out of a similar period of time.
Uh, and then we'll have some Eastereggs of literal connection between
them as well, which will be nice.

Kyle (01:17):
What I love is that we weren't even really aware of the connection.
We weren't deep in the lorefor either of these artists.
And we were aware of things that they did.
And as we were researching, youknow, we've been texting each other a
bunch like, Oh my God, did you know?
And we just knew that these were records.
Like you can, you see the coverand you see people that you like.

(01:39):
Their music binds talking aboutthese records over and over,
just sort of universally beloved.
And I've started doing the litmusnow to of, I'll just show the record.
I'll be like in public at a thing.
And somebody will ask me aboutthe podcast, which is, makes
me cringe out of my skin.
But then it's an, it's a way todo a little bit of field research.

(02:01):
You know, what, what's coming up next.
And then you show them the nextcouple of things we're talking about.
People like buckled at the knees whenI showed them the album cover, they
were like, Oh my God, this record.
So there's almost a religious fervoraround heaven or Las Vegas more
broadly around the Cocteau twins.
But it's just so interesting thatthis deep in the game, we're still

(02:24):
finding stuff where we know it'sbig, but we just haven't opened that
door in the endless hallway yet.
And now we do, and it's ahuge room, like in Encanto.
Um, so I'm, I'm excited to walk aroundinside for a little bit together.

Cliff (02:40):
Yeah, speaking of cringing out of my skin, uh, having
public conversations about music,

Kyle (02:45):
Is that the title of your, your standup, your, your Netflix hour?
Speaking, speaking of cringing out of myskin, what's the deal with social cues?

Cliff (02:55):
Have you guys seen this?
Have you heard of this?
Feeling weird in public?
Have you done this?
I'm realizing now, you phrasing itthis way, I already now have at least
one thing that's going to activatein me like the Winter Soldier when
someone mentions this album now.
And a little preview of probably whatwe'll talk about later because I'd love
to bring this up, but it's become arecent realization of mine that this is

(03:18):
now my canonical anti loudness album.
Like evidence one, a for submissioninto court about why the loudness
wars were not only terrible, butnow I also think produced music that
tried to compensate for the loudnessthat was being produced and kept us
from having records like this untilprobably again, in the last few years,

(03:42):
when all of that shit died back down.
I didn't realize that I wouldcare about this or that somehow
I would mentally connect.
This record to death magneticbut it has happened in my brain.
Uh, and I look forward to talkingabout that some more, especially as
we talk about the songs and sounds

Kyle (03:57):
you are saying they're opposite polarities.
There are two records that are loudand one of them tries to be loud and
one, and this one tries to be dynamic

Cliff (04:05):
Yes, yes.
With Death Magnetic being the posterchild of the Loudness Wars, uh, I think it
helps,

Kyle (04:12):
a, a solid spectral block for over an hour.
Yeah,

Cliff (04:17):
Yes, they found so many ways to be annoying as a band, uh, and
then this was one of their best ones.
But yeah, just understandinga little bit more

Kyle (04:25):
they did.
Lulu, and then somehow, orI don't, I don't remember
which one was first, but two.
There was two.
Two right there in sequence whereit's like, what are you guys doing?

Cliff (04:34):
Yeah, if we're cringing out of our skin their story is comfortable here, bro.
We're good.
No, this is fine

Kyle (04:41):
An almost consultant level of brutal lack of self awareness.
the finance bros of music.

Cliff (04:50):
How to never feel cringed by never realizing that you notice
yourself feeling cringe a story

Kyle (04:56):
This is exactly the kind of discussion I know Liz Frazier
would love being a digressionbefore we get into her music.
But you need the contrast, I feel toappreciate the softness and deeply
feltness of what they're doing here.

Cliff (05:11):
Well, we can't launch directly into all the superlatives, because that
doesn't make for interesting content.

Kyle (05:17):
Yeah, remember the no conjecture rule?
I was thinking as we werepreparing the outline, we're
probably about to break that shit.
This is a real, thisrecord's a real all timer.

Cliff (05:26):
So, released in September of 1990, recorded in London, this is a record
that we chose specifically out of theCocteau Twins library, but also I would
imagine we would just not only pluck thisout of their discography and the Tune

(05:47):
dig calendar for this particular month.
But if you wanted to touch on any of thedownstream implications of dream pop,
shoegaze, ethereal sounds, ambient, postrock, like any number of things that
quite frankly have become my favoritesort of sub genres of every genre.

(06:08):
Um, this is once again, uh, sortof center of that constellation.
And they have a ton of great music.
Across their libraryas an artist for sure.
But this one in particular, I justwant to say clearly like this is far
and away my favorite, uh, and partof it is because of the production.
But I would also learn as we doon these episodes the whole reason

(06:30):
we structure things this way.
Not only do you learn stuff bylistening to an album with a lot of
intention and fresh ears, so to speak,but loading up all the context in
history of how the record gets madeSo Sometimes they'll surprise you.
This one was like, Oh yes,that makes exact sense.
That is correct.

Kyle (06:50):
That, that translates.

Cliff (06:53):
even, you know, and I'm, I will mention a ton of these, right.
But even down to them having 10 fullyrecorded instrumental songs before
Elizabeth Frazier began her work islike, yes, that tracks to me and matches
exactly to not only what makes sense tome kind of about this music, but What
makes me love it specifically there asa person who loves to shit just a little

(07:18):
bit on the role of vocals and lyrics.
This is music that helps meprove my point in a way that

Kyle (07:26):
Oh, I was gonna say, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Fuck you, dude.
I was gonna say, this is a counterpointto everything you've ever said about it.
It's probably two halves of the sametruth, but it's like, no, there's a way
to do it this is, I guess the same thingKurt Cobain was doing, but less a bit
less dialed in, um, and we, we can talkabout the nuances cause I've really sat

(07:49):
and thought about this a lot as havetheir fans clearly there's no accident
to the way that this is being conceivedof and it's, I find it extraordinary
and as a words person, I'm, I'm reallymystified by it and I'm impressed.

Cliff (08:04):
This is exciting.
We got a podcast now, baby.
We disagree over something mildlyinconsequential in which we both
agree on the larger point anyway, butwe're going to talk about it for a

Kyle (08:14):
Yeah, yeah,

Cliff (08:15):
No, that's great.

Kyle (08:16):
words are failing us.
We probably have similar feelings, butwe're expressing them in a different
way, thus further reinforcing LizFrazier's point with trying to
avoid the English language entirely,because fuck the whole thing.
Am I right?
You

Cliff (08:30):
me anyway, so might as well do it on purpose and make it sound good.

Kyle (08:34):
Since we're doing disclaimers, I, I just want to reiterate my
hatred of genre terminology.
Dream Pop is always onethat has really bugged me.
And, this record, the CocteauTwins in general, but this record
specifically because of its poppiness.
It is fully worthy of the term dream popbecause it sounds like you're listening

(08:56):
to a pop record in a dream where it'sall a little bit out in front of you
and you can't really, as soon as you tryto grab at the details, they evaporate.
But if you strip the whole thing back,like if somebody sang these melody lines
and played the basic chord progressions,it would be great and memorable songs.

(09:18):
so the, the genre tagreally works for me here.
Not going to go around usingit, but I do appreciate it.
It is helpful to understandwhat you're about to experience.
If somebody says that'swhat this music is,

Cliff (09:32):
Fully agreed.
And one reason I'll keep bringingup production as we go along is
for me, I, so I can agree withyou, but even just thinking about
the production and how productionspecifically will impact a pop record.
Like to me, you could.
You could, at least theoretically,turn a dream pop record into a

(09:53):
non dream pop record exclusivelythrough production approaches, right?

Kyle (09:57):
totally.

Cliff (09:58):
and so to me, that is why, yep, agreed.
Uh, I don't want to overusethat label, but here it works.
And, uh, It has the dreamy pop ness ofit has an expression that you can sort
of point at, uh, and has some differentlike pieces of the elephant that you can

(10:18):
actually describe and see a whole of whyit sounds good point being, I feel like
if this record were made or produced in,in the midst of the loudness wars, like
I mentioned, so, you know, 10 to 15 yearsago the vocals and other aspects of the
instrumentation would be so forward thatit would not have the washy feeling and

(10:43):
sensation that this record specifically

Kyle (10:46):
Mm hmm.

Cliff (10:47):
And for me personally, that makes all of the difference in when
I want to listen to pop records or

Kyle (10:53):
The, the layers would flatten and it would be like overpaint.
Yeah, yeah you really critically needspace with the amount of like chaining and
layering of effects that's happening here.

Cliff (11:03):
yeah.
And to me, this is sort of a siblingconversation to our Olivia Rodrigo
episode because we not only talkedabout being surprised by the quality
of the music on Sour in general, but wetalked a lot about the production and
why it sounds good and how it works.
And like, that's another record that'sa good example of at least, From

(11:25):
my anecdotal or personal experienceof the record, like the balancing
of the instrumentation brings outthe overall like emotion of the
songs that are actually written.
They feel more intense to me,more immersive because especially
when it comes to vocals.
When they are properly aligned withall of that other ethereal sounding,

(11:50):
reverberation, whatever else is happening,it feels like one cohesive story
being told as opposed to, you know, alot of pop records to me feel like a
singular person performing with somebackground people doing music to it.
Like, if that makes enough sense, liketo me, that's, that's really the hard to

Kyle (12:10):
karaoke.
It's somebody, it's like a,

Cliff (12:13):
Great.
Yes.

Kyle (12:15):
thing that then somebody, Consumes or whatever.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
What, what I found really interestingabout that unlike so many other
artists the band has a huge website.
And it's got, it's got aglossary of terminology.
It's got all sorts of interviews.
It's got stuff about gear.

(12:35):
It's got all the press that'sever been written around lyrics
or lack thereof or whatever.
It's just like, it's a, it's atremendously good repository that I would
love to see from more legacy artists.
So kudos to the team that.
Puts it together and maintains it.
One of the scores of articles on thereis an interview with Robin Guthrie

(12:55):
where he talks about how each trackin the song is a recorded effect.
And he talks about how he's nota really good guitar player.
So like sometimes he'll do asingle notey thing and then
start building and bouncing.
I didn't think about the elementsbeing that thin or minimal or singular.
getting from there.

(13:17):
To the huge sounding thingsthat you're hearing on this
record is a an enormous journey.
And makes me Makes meapplaud what's happening?
Even more.
I mean the dude literally said I wouldn'tknow a d flat from a b major which is
very much in the school of Gary arsefrom yawning man who just like does

(13:38):
stuff with his hands or jay mascus fromdinosaur junior who was just making
up chord fingerings and To be able todo almost perverse amateurishness and
land something cool and novel is like,well, of course, eventually you would
land something different, but to make itsound different and cool a huge thing.
So the level of innovation ondisplay here goes all the way down

(14:00):
to the bassist musical elements,which I find really exciting.

Cliff (14:03):
Totally.
I mean, Robin Guthrie.
So just to, set it up clearly.
So he is the Producing this record, he'sprimarily the guitarist, uh, but to,
to really bring home immediately, youknow, Kyle, what you were just saying,
like, this is sort of a, it's like aknee jerk, Oh, Cocteau twins, like, uh,

(14:24):
classic synth records, like actuallya shocking amount of the music on this
album is just guitar being channeledthrough, uh, You know, rack unit after
rack unit effects, processing aftereffects, processing, building, building,
building, and creating a bunch of layersof things to the degree that, to some

(14:44):
extent, this record in the, especially theguitar playing, has more in common with
King Tubby meets Rockers Uptown than itdoes most of the other guitar based music
that we talk about, which is the thingthat makes it sound and feel synth y,

Kyle (15:00):
another Jeff Buckley connection.
It's a guitar record that you didn't knowyou should refer to as a guitar record

Cliff (15:07):
Yup.
So speaking of that, two, two really greatconnections, I think, between our just
previous episode on Jeff Buckley and thisone, one is the bone headed one that's
just worth mentioning, but the other,I think is, is a little more deeper and
conceptual, uh, in alliance to how we'retrying to approach music and trying to
help other people approach music too.

(15:28):
So one is just, yes, eventually ElizabethFrazier vocalist of Cocteau's winds would.
be in a relationship with JeffBuckley and would go on to write
about that in future music and dida duet with Jeff before his death.
And, they had arelationship, it played out.
I don't think that should or didhave a super influential or important

(15:53):
chunk of meaning relative to whatwe should discuss about this record.

Kyle (15:57):
The, the only, the only digression that I would, I would
probably account for is she is a hugeself-admitted fan of Tim Buckley.
And I know there's a, there's a wholecomplicated relationship there, but
I think there's a spiritual, like Iheard a voice in Jeff and felt a spirit
that I have always been drawn to.

(16:17):
There's a, there's a very cosmicessence to Liz Frazier and the way she
moves through the, I mean, she's very.
Artists, artists in that way,like big, big old fields.
So yeah, there's the, I don't wantto call it tabloid stuff, but yeah,
there's, there's the stuff that thispodcast tries to not concern itself
with, that's, that's there a little bit.

(16:37):
and that people have askedher about, pretty exhaustively
at this point, unfortunately.

Cliff (16:43):
Yeah.
So it's worth noting so that wecan say we know about it, but we're
intentionally not talking about it.
We are the same duo who brought youan Alice Coltrane episode in which
we were like, Yeah, so the factthat she was with John Coltrane
is basically not important here.
So let's just set that to the sideand talk about a mammoth record.
Uh, so similarly here, there'sa lot more to talk about.
Especially because, In the timingof this album Guthrie and Fraser

(17:08):
had just had their first child.
And it was a newborn here, whichwe'll talk some more about the
pretty heavy stuff that was going onfor everybody in this band during,
during recording that I think helpedproduce the thickness of this record.
But on a lighter note, I just wantedto call this out because I really
enjoyed this discussion from last time.

(17:29):
I usually don't get all likemeta talking about our previous
discussions, but like in

Kyle (17:34):
All right.
Did you cool out Dan Harmon?

Cliff (17:37):
sorry, but in that Jeff Buckley episode, one of the things we talked
about is paying attention to yourfavorite artists, favorite artists, right?
And in this moment, yes, wehave a direct Chaperone, uh,
reference for that whole meme.
Yes.
But that's been going on for a long

Kyle (17:53):
R.
I.
P.
Jeff Buckley.
You would have loved Chapel Run.

Cliff (17:57):
we can draw a line between anyone

Kyle (18:00):
That's why, that's why we're great at bars.
Give me two, give me two things.
I'll get there.
Two, give two, two farawayend points and some hot wings.
I got you, baby.

Cliff (18:13):
Yes, Cliff, famously good at extroverted conversations
with strangers in bars.
Yes.
But we talked a lot about paying,again, paying attention with your
favorite artist's favorite artists.
And for Jeff Buckley, like that's,you know, that's, that was folks
like Jimmy Page and things like that.
Here here there is a lot of love forCocteau twins, but one of them that was

(18:36):
pretty immediate to pull out, Prince.
Like Prince, Unabashedlylike this band a lot.
He replicated it through music, bothat the time, uh, and then through,
um, the 2014 release of Tic Tac Toe.
Like, there's several songs that are kindof direct aping that he didn't really

(18:56):
hide when someone would ask him about it.
And then additionally, hetried, he tried to sign them

Kyle (19:02):
And oh, by the way, do, doing stuff like directly or indirectly from
other artists was very much not Prince'sthing, just to put a fender point on it.

Cliff (19:10):
Right, right, because who was doing something he hadn't
already done or thought of, right?
so this is another example of like,okay, I was already on board, but
I'm gonna lock in pretty hard.
Uh, if, if Prince is paying somuch attention to what was done,
especially in the early 90s iterationsof what this band was cranking out.

Kyle (19:29):
Just the fact that he literally said, what I like is stuff that I can't
do, and I would never do, like, theCocteau Twins, I would never do that.

Cliff (19:37):
The, another quote he had though, which I think, Can take us
directly into sort of what it feelslike to try to listen to this again
with fresh ears and to start tyingtogether some of the references we've
already made about vocal approachesand the sounds and all this stuff.
He said, quote, you can't understandthe words of Cocteau twin songs,
but their harmonies put you ina dreamlike state and like, yep.

(20:01):
Yep.
I mean, we could kind of put the podcastdown now if we were being irresponsible
or if we were only looking for Princequotes to end everything that we were
talking about, but that's a prettygood, I think summation of at least
one way to experience this record andkind of understand what it's sending
in your way when you're listening.

Kyle (20:22):
I think about the essence of the Erykah Badu episode where we were talking
about how her, her sort of Unstatedmission statement is to raise vibrations.
It's like elevated consciousness.
That this is more like out than up.
I mean, I think it is intendedto be a consciousness shifter for
themselves or otherwise, but morelike diffuse to capture the the,

(20:47):
the bigness of consciousness.
So dreamlike state is perfect, but youknow, don't think of yourself falling
asleep and having a movie playing.
Like think of your sensesbeing really diffuse and beyond
your ability to catch them.

Cliff (21:01):
I love how you said that.
Sorry.
No matter how long we do thistogether, man, it still excites me
when we start saying things and it'slike, Oh, that's exactly what I was
thinking about when I was listening.
So it's still, man, it justgets me stoked, but okay.
That is a great way.
I think to talk about what surprisedme when, you know, this wasn't my
first time hearing this record.

(21:22):
I've heard it plenty, but.
You know, we always take this approachwhen picking an album and we focus on it
and we give it active attention and one ofthe exercises we try to do is just giving
it a sort of new ear listen and justnotice what surprises you and specifically
Related to what you were just saying,when we talk about it being dreamlike,

(21:45):
one thing I noticed specifically is thatdespite the songs being a pretty normal
length, they never overstay their welcome.
there's no slow ramp up, there's nota lot of instrumental interludes that
feel like they're spacing out thesongs, there's not a lot of repetition
that feels like it's unnecessary.
The songs, like, pretty much endimmediately, uh, once the, the, the

(22:09):
melody itself is done for the last time.
Like there's no long play out, there'sno ethereal interlude And in that sense,
it has an uncanny dream like qualityin that dreams somehow always feel like
they just stop at this really weird time.
Like it sort of completes,

Kyle (22:29):
And you always become, you always become aware of them in the middle.
So you get dropped right into the mainidea, which is what these songs do.
And you know, Robin Guthrie talking aboutlike, they're all built around an effect.
And then I start buildinglayers outward from there.
It's like a, oh yeah, a fish ismy teacher in my 11th grade class.
That's what this, that'swhat track five is.

(22:49):
Fish is my teacher.
And then track seven is, um, I'm seeingthe Northern lights on another planet
and another timeline or whatever.
They're, they're distinctive,but they do drop you right in.
There's no, It that's what lendsitself to oh, this is a pop record.
There's no bullshit You're right intothe main idea and they get going they
cook on a dynamic and then they leaveIt's like borderline chuck berry ish

(23:12):
in that

Cliff (23:12):
Oh yeah!

Kyle (23:13):
It's very focused.
so great great on yougood point there Because

Cliff (23:19):
really stood out to me especially again, coming off of a conversation about
a Jeff Buckley record where I personallytalked about how it felt hard to kind of
click into it for me for whatever reason.

Kyle (23:32):
there is so much build and and wandering and dynamic on that record.
Yeah

Cliff (23:37):
Which, like, I mean, I'm a, I'm a mono explosions in the fan
sky, or explosions in the sky fan.
There we go.
Ha ha ha ha ha.

Kyle (23:46):
Did you know there's an Explosions in the Sky connection
to this band other than Sonically?

Cliff (23:52):
No.

Kyle (23:53):
Yeah, so here we go.
I wanted to talk about Bella Unionwhen we got to the last part.
Um, and obviously we can revisit that.
But Explosions in the Skyis a Bella Union band.
It is, or at some point was.
So, they're part of this tree.

Cliff (24:08):
That tracks.
Man, that's cool.
yeah, explosions in the sky, mono,Seeker roast, which I think we'll
also mention later has a connection.
Like, I love a good build.
I'm a big fan of it, but in the wrongcontext or in a, in a particular type of
genre, especially for me, it just, it'shard to click into this one opposite.
Five seconds into the first track,anytime I was doing a full album

(24:32):
playthrough or even, you know, I try tomix it up sometimes and play things in
different orders or see what comes out,you know, we love the classic play it
in reverse trick to see what happens.
Every single time I was locked inimmediately, no matter what I was doing.
I, and it was just a a difficult todescribe quality, but that I love.

(24:54):
Having a stupid podcast where Ican verbalize to other people like,
yeah, sometimes music doesn't work.
This one did.
You're like, you should keep trying itbecause sometimes things just click into
place that you would have never expected.

Kyle (25:05):
That is a really excellent point.
Cause I'm sitting here thinkingabout all the times in the past
few weeks where I was like, I don'twant to listen to that right now.
I'm not in the moodfor that kind of thing.
And then I'd be like, well, just do it.
So you like think aboutit for 30 minutes today.
It's also a pretty lean record.
It's 37 minutes.
Um, so it, it gets in andout and then doesn't, doesn't
overstay its welcome certainly.

(25:26):
But like within 30 secondsof putting the record on.
Like right away with cherry colored funk.
You're like, Oh, okay.
Your muscles relax a little.
And you're like, I'm, I'm grooving.
Like you feel yourself kind of yourbody, your whole body loosens up with it.
And you're right.
It is immediate.
If there had been a bunch ofbuild, or it had had some of the
sparseness of their earlier stuff.

(25:48):
the coldness the post punkiness Itwouldn't have pulled me in as fast, but
yeah, it, uh, the lushness really, reallygets you no matter what mood you're in.
To that point, we'd also beremiss if we didn't point out that
this is their sixth full album.
Um, and they'd been a band since 79.
And I can't think of that many artiststhat their sixth, seventh, eighth record.

(26:16):
is the consensus favorite amongfans and casual listeners.
So there's a bit of a unique qualityto this group because they hit a stride
or had a moment or a breakthrough.
I even think about, you know, I've talkedabout every time I die as a personal
favorite band on this podcast before andhow People generally acknowledge that

(26:38):
they got better and tighter as they wentalong, but there's always going to be a
camp that's like, you know, they're forthe, from 2003, the early stuff, man.
and, and there's, there'sdefinitely people in the camp
of liking the early 80s stuff.
lower register, Liz Frazier, sort ofa different approach to the, to the
sound, but I think if you pulled ahundred people who like this band.

(27:03):
You clear 90 of them that wouldsay, yeah, start with heaven or Las
Vegas, which is so interesting to me.
And like the early 80s stuff, youcan hear, you can hear the starts of
things on lullabies in the early 80s.
There's cool, likedifferent vocal rhythms.
and then you do the records right aroundthis one, Bluebell Knoll before it

(27:24):
and Four Calendar Cafe right after it.
And both of those are really good records.
Like we could easily, if this recordhad never existed, we could easily talk
about either of those other two and belike, wow, this group was really great.
But It's immediately apparent from thefirst notes of cherry colored funk.
And they've said this in retrospectives,they knew when they did that instrumental,

(27:48):
like, Oh, we're onto something.
I just, I really look for stuff about.
Did you know how, like, howdid you make it more special?
Were there influences that went into this?
And I guess that's the point you're,you're going to get into in a bit.
It's just real life informed aspecial energy that they brought
to the creation of this stuff.

Cliff (28:09):
Yep.
I think that energy plus their literalapproach to recording and production
produces this kind of unique combinationof things that we haven't seen a ton.
Cause it's pretty hard to get thatcombination of, uh, extremely talented,
tight knit group of musicians who arealso, once again, at least one of them

(28:29):
is an extraordinarily talented producerwhen you, you know, when you get those
kind of moments, you know, like, uh, Aneasy call out is the band Converge, right?
When one of your members is anactual audio engineer, yeah.
You have a differentlayer to draw on entirely.

Kyle (28:48):
It's worth.
Worth mentioning that 4AD, theirlabel, tried to get Brian Eno to
produce a couple of their recordsbefore this, and he literally said,
nah, they're good, they got it.

Cliff (28:58):
Eno, thanks.
Yeah.
Great stuff.

Kyle (29:01):
but if that doesn't mean anything to you now go to Brian Eno's
Wikipedia page, we've mentioned hima number of times, but go, go look
at all the stuff he has been involvedwith, much of which was an influence
on this band like he worked with.
John Cale, The Talking Heads, Devo,Bowie would go on to work with
U2 and maybe if he'd worked withCocteau Twins, we wouldn't have

(29:22):
been subjected to U2 in the 80s.
You and I have differentfeelings about that.
But, they did go on to work.
Yeah, snuck that one in.
They did go on to work.
With Harold Budd later in the 80s whowas part of was a collaborator of you
knows, you know worked on ambient 2Um, and like one of my favorite ambient

(29:48):
records ever is called pavilion of dreamsby harold budd And they did a record
with him in 86 There's a cut above fromtheir peers thing because they're, they
were venturing off into new directions.
So, like we would do a disservice totry to talk too much about the history.
Unfortunately, I don't, I haven't seenenough of the history and context around
this group in one place, perhaps outsideof their website, but they I've grown

(30:15):
more fascinated with them as we'vestarted to look more closely and, um,
you know, the, this is yet another groupthat they are great in part because the
family tree around them or the, the sixdegrees around them are like so much good
recorded music in the history of music.

Cliff (30:32):
For sure.
So another thing that stood out to me onreactive listening to this one was, you
know, we, we already kind of talked aboutthe downstream connection to a million
genres, artists, ideas, whatever thatwould, that would be heavily inspired
by this band and this particular record.

(30:53):
Um, But even I, a person who is prettyselective about the pop adjacent stuff
I listen to and am familiar with, evenI, immediately on first listen, was
drawing out specific moves in the songand mapping them back to other artists.
I heard FKA Twigs directlyon one of the songs.

(31:15):
One of the tracks, uh, Ice BlinkLuck, reminds me of the band Churches
and Lorne Mayberry, and like, I I'mnot a huge Churches fan across that
whole discography, but I've alwaysappreciated a lot of their music.
About their approach some of the songsI really love and they were really fun
to see in concert, but like the church'ssong leave a trace like if you can't hear

(31:36):
Cocteau twins directly from that song Idon't know listen again and believe me
I guess And then even 50 50 Clown, whichis a pretty cool song in and of itself.
The ending had voices on it that,speaking of the Olivia Rodrigo record,
reminded me of a move off of Sour.
sometimes we can't, you know, youmentioned the no conjecture rule.

(31:59):
We don't want to draw lines wherewe know that they don't exist.
But some of these are like, nah.
You were listening to thiswhile you recorded that other
album, and that's awesome.
Like, that's that blues spirit playingout through all types of music and
pervading everything like the inverseof a cancer, where we can all borrow

(32:20):
the coolest moves from one another andkeep recreating into something totally
different that then inspires other people.
So, especially if you are, um, Even closeto like a pop or indie pop aficionado
of any sort, make sure you've heard thisrecord recently because it will feel
familiar and I think that's going tobe cool for a lot of people who aren't

(32:40):
like me, uh, and know a lot more aboutdifferent genres of music than I do.

Kyle (32:44):
There, there are moments where it ventures into like
FKA twigs is a cool example.
And you draw it backto Prince 50, 50 clown.
The first time I really listened to itwas like this could be an R& B song.
Like if you put real lyrics on this,the progression of this could be a
2000 or later R& B song for sure.

(33:06):
And 50 50 clown is theone that people compared.
That song love that will be done thatPrince wrote originally for Martika.
Olivia Rodrigo herself couldprobably turn it into a cool.
R& B ish thing, or a number of artistscould and I have a whole, dense paragraph
of people that like, if you're picking upwhat they're putting down as pop artists

(33:28):
on this but boy, do I have a, a blockof new things for you to go listen to.
This is actually, now that I'm thinkingabout it, this and Jeff Buckley are two
that we should probably make playlistsfor probably just needs to be a standard.
We're thinking out loud here.
Brainstorm happening in real time.
People, there needs to bea standard recommended.
If you like, we're alwaystalking shit about algorithms.

(33:50):
Let's put our money where our mouth isand do the weird, the weird connections
that you might not have expected playlist.

Cliff (33:56):
Whatever.
I stand firmly in my stance that we kickthe algorithm's ass in most cases, uh, and
throw its dead body behind the dumpster,So our ability to, yes, even I'm excited
to just get to that part of the episodeand talk about it because yeah, like the
Jeff Buckley episode, instead of tryingto condense what's happening in this album

(34:18):
into a singular thing that then guide youalong a singular trajectory through other
related music, like we, we like firmlystand against this with religious fervor,
like go in every direction instead.
Like, look in all of the places,uh, and look for all the things that
surprise you and delight you thatyou wouldn't have expected otherwise,

(34:40):
because there are a million rabbitholes to go down, and that is, yeah.

Kyle (34:44):
a deeply held belief for me hanging around musicians that they don't think
about it the way that listeners do.
There's less linearity.
They're pulling inspiration from moredisparate places than often they let on.
And so I think we're trying to offerconnections, more cosmic connections
like the musicians themselves wouldwant to be acknowledged or explored.

(35:06):
It's really like inspiration begetsmore inspiration, you know, it's
got a, it's got a multiplier effect.
We've talked about that before.
So the mark of a good album for us totalk about is the size of the ripples
and the space between them, if the moredifferent they are, but you can clearly
draw some kind of connection still,the more worth talking about it is.

(35:29):
And I think you'll continue to see lotsmore of that from us in the future.

Cliff (35:34):
Was there anything else that surprised you when you
were listening to it fresh?

Kyle (35:37):
I feel two things.
I feel one, like, SimonRaymond gets overlooked a lot.
In this conversation about Guthrieand Liz Frazier and in a bit of
a give the drummer some moment.
The bass is a very important elementof this record that like, I just did
not see talked about enough and basein the way that like John Paul Jones

(35:58):
was frequently not acknowledged enoughas the backbone of Led Zeppelin.
There's like if you watch Zeppelin videos.
And he's doing the bass with his feet, thesynth bass on like a no quarter type song.
There's a lot of that kind of feelingbass and it really it propels things,
it accents things, like everything isbuilt around the guitar slash synth

(36:23):
layer, the mostly guitar stuff, right?
But the base either warmsit up or it accents it.
So really listen for that and listenon a good pair of speakers where you
can pick up the low end really nicely.
Cause it's, it's pretty midrange and Trebley, uh, without,
without the right set of speakers.
The other thing that I'll say you know, alot's been said about the lyrics or lack

(36:44):
thereof, or the multiple languages or the.
All the stuff about Liz Frazier,but cadences of delivery and runs
of notes are like two things Ithink she does really uniquely.
So the, the cadence on somethinglike, I wear your ring, dun, dun,
dun, dun, it's not how I would have.

(37:07):
Put um, a vocal line in that instrumentaland I found multiple instances of
that as I was listening she just makesreally unique choices around places.
She puts rhythmic emphasis and runs so notjust like weird keys or weird sequences
of notes, but she does these littleflitters that are You totally inimitable.

(37:31):
Nobody else could do them.
And if somebody else tried, you'd be like,Oh, that's a Liz Frazier thing for sure.
You really hear it in, uh, thefirst time that I ever noticed it
was the fearless on my breath linein teardrop by massive attack.
And like, Oh my God, who'sthat singing before I'd ever
listened to the Cocteau twins.

(37:52):
You know, I, I'd heard that song.
But in, in Ice Blink Luck there, shedoes like a, a trilling thing almost
that it's like, Whoa, holy shit.
How do you do, how do youeven do that with your voice?
It's a little bit operatic.
It's a little bit Bjerk.
It's a little, a little bit.
Punk or post punk atonal.

(38:12):
But it's really beautiful and itit seems impossible to pull off.
I Am not a great singer, but I certainlycan't make my voice approach anything
Near that there's a deftness to it that isjust I find really really impressive and
it seems natural Effortless effervescentlike it just seems like that was in her

(38:34):
and that's just how she sings around thehouse almost there's a lightness To it,
and I Found myself like you can't hone inon any of the lyrics, but I found myself
often Being like what's she gonna do next?
You know, like what john bonham playingdrums to make another zeppelin connection

(38:55):
just like I fill to fill line to line.
I don't really know what'sgonna happen and it's thrilling

Cliff (38:59):
I liked your Björk reference there.
I think this record draws outone of the two sides of Björk
that has gotten channeled intopopular music since she existed.
To me, there are a millionways to classify this, right?
But the side of Bjork that everyoneseemed to adopt is the side that points

(39:20):
towards, like, Regina Spektor and stuff,where people are like, I am small!
Hello, here I am!
And like, oh, okay that works.
And that got, that became like a

Kyle (39:29):
I'm wearing a goose

Cliff (39:33):
And I just, I feel like that became the move for versus.
On pop songs, and then they would,you know, dive back into the lush hook
in a chorus and, but, but like everyverse would sort of fall back to this
minimalist, um, sort of voice forwardthing, which, first of all, Bjerg did and
does in an inhuman way, much better thanother people who even attempt to imitate

(39:55):
it, but on the other side of it, like,If you can even just think of the line
emotional landscape, a lot of people dothe landscape part of Björk, but don't
do the emotional part where she is just
directly on note, directly etherealin with the music designed to
give you a very clear melody line.

(40:16):
Like that aspect of it, inmy opinion, gets sort of.
Uh, in subsequent records, thisrecord is a gray example of that
approach to vocalization where it is.
No, I'm going to slot in here and yes, itwill often be melody, but sometimes it's
harmony, or sometimes you can't reallytell who's carrying the melody or what

(40:39):
part is harmony because it's all one kindof bigger mishmash of things together.
And because we keep running allof these signals through effects
units that are building layers ontop of it, the Venn diagram is no
longer a series of three circles.
Like, we don't know where theedges are because things are
bleeding into one another.
And,

Kyle (40:59):
And she stacks vocals like in the round with herself, you know, like
overlapping phrasings in addition toharmony stacks like I want to emphasize
that the more you sit with her deliveryIt's very clear She's not making up
a language or doing baby talk or likesometimes she's sneaking in a little

(41:24):
bit more scottish or old english orwhatever of You We're clear words that
are pulled, but it's like, what ifI stripped all of the hardness away
from words with discrete admissiblemeanings, but like, it's not, it seems
like a lazy thing or an avoidance thing.

(41:44):
But it's perfect.
It's not too loose, and it's not too,like she didn't make up Klingon for it,
and only sing in this specific language,and that's what gives it it's dreamy
quality, because it's recognizable andreal, but it's not literal and linear.

Cliff (42:05):
Yeah.

Kyle (42:05):
And that's extraordinary.
Think about not only conceptualizing tonail a middle ground like that and evade
either of those ends of the spectrum,but to be able to do it and then fucking
remember it, to be able to sing itthe same way twice is like, my brain
could never do that in a million years.

Cliff (42:27):
When I was learning to sing in a choral setting when I was
younger, like one of the thingsthey would teach us was if you don't
know the words, sing watermelon
because watermelon will lookapproximately like, you know what
you're doing and won't sound terrible.
And it's sort of like, Well, what ifyou joined a chorus and then you made

(42:47):
up your own part with watermelon andit sounded so good that they were
like, wait a minute, let's make thatthe main thing that we're going to do.
And we'll just kind of focus on thatbecause it doesn't really matter
that you're not saying what wewere trying to say to begin with.
We'll get enough of the point, butyou just keep doing what you're doing.
You just vibe it out.
If you want to use some of the wordsyou can, if not just the fact that
we're approximately in the same locationas the words, we'll do just fine.

(43:11):
And it just works so well.

Kyle (43:13):
but it's like she learned watermelon in 14 languages and
uses them all on the record

Cliff (43:19):
Well, as someone who works in corporate America during the week, um,
that sort of skill does come in handy.
Um, you can just sort of likesay watermelon ish things back
to people and they're like, yes,yes, ROI, ROI, great meeting.
Yeah.

Kyle (43:33):
give this guy a promotion

Cliff (43:35):
Yeah.
I'm going to put this on LinkedIn.
Here's what Watermelonteaches me about B2B sales.
I

Kyle (43:49):
Uh Send this podcast episode to your favorite best wearing b2b sales friend

Cliff (43:58):
have one in mind.

Kyle (43:59):
And then afterward, ask yourself, why are they your friend?

Cliff (44:05):
Because we might as well make this turn as dramatic as humanly possible.
I think it's worth noting without, uh,Belaboring the point, a couple of like
serious things that were happening in realtime during the recording of this record.
And I think it's important tobring this up for two reasons.

(44:25):
One is because, well, the context ofan album is always something that we
try to bring forward as much as we can.
Not people talking or playing.
Projecting onto the record, butlike, what were things that were
actually happening then that theartists themselves say influenced it?
So I think it's important to know fromthat perspective, but from another I
think this would be a good example ofactually not overthinking The meaning

(44:50):
of music and that's great coming.
Thank you podcast That's two hourslong every episode about a fucking
album for telling me not to overthinkit but like there were some really
heavy things that were happening then Idon't think and I don't see any reason
to believe that that darkness is theonly thing that produced the outcome

(45:12):
Of what people love about this record

Kyle (45:15):
As the B2B sales guys would say, it's a data point, not the data point.

Cliff (45:21):
We cannot keep this theme going in a MetaSense across all of our episodes.

Kyle (45:25):
we circle back on what was happening in the studio?

Cliff (45:31):
so, So two things.
First of all, like I mentioneda minute ago when we discussed,
uh, Elizabeth Frazier and RobinGuthrie had just had a newborn.
So there, there is a child betweenthe two of these people, uh,
that is less than a year old.
And as Kyle knows personally, andI only know anecdotally, that first
year seems pretty busy and difficult.

Kyle (45:54):
It's psychotic and psychedelic.
It's insane.
I mean, it felt like I was on drugsfor a whole year straight, honestly.

Cliff (46:00):
Every person who I love.
Well, I'll say it that way.
Every person who I love, who has beenthrough that experience, describes
it in some capacity like that.
Like, it is the most everythingand the most terrible, all at once,
somehow wrapped into the same thing.
And my capacity for enduringthe terribleness and my capacity
for, like, expansion, all werethere at the same moment, and

(46:24):
I found out I was a superhuman.

Kyle (46:26):
When every, when everyone's like, yeah, you're never the
same after you have Kisly.
Yeah, because it breaksyour fucking brain, dude.
Like, it, you just fundamentally arenot the same physiologically anymore.
One, because apparentlybiological things happen.
But two because you are.
You are in the trenches.

(46:46):
You are experiencing the middle ofthe night in different ways, more than
you ever anticipated that you would.
You're sitting there thinkingabout your friends doing last
call at a place out in public.
And you're like, oh god, I'm here.
I have throw up on me.

Cliff (47:05):
So that was happening for two of the three people in this band.
And on top of that, you know, oneof them, uh, Robin Guthrie being,
you know, the person who is moreor less taking single vibes and
building them into massive songs.
Like this is what is happening in hisbrain and body during that time period.
At the same time, while they were inthe studio, um, Simon Raymond's dad

(47:30):
died, in the middle of all of this.
Um, and,

Kyle (47:34):
you're getting the whole circle of life in one

Cliff (47:37):
oh,

Kyle (47:38):
creative burst.
Um, and

Cliff (47:43):
maybe we'll mention this a little bit later too, but like, we,
once again, we, we know that that hada direct impact, uh, and that's worth
bringing up because Simon even mentionedthat, in his own words, quote, After
my dad died, I couldn't even grieveproperly, and I arrived back at the
studio early the day after the funeraland began playing the piano, and by the

(48:04):
time Robin arrived, Foo Foo Foxes andMidsummer Fires was pretty much done.
Like, so, so we know from anobjective standpoint, from the source,
this song was written in grief.
Like, this is a grief song.
and while it has some sort of spiritualconnections to the scenario Jeff
Buckley had in his discovery, whichwe talked about last episode, where,

(48:27):
you know, in the shadow of your fatherdying, uh, you're able to emerge with
something artistic and beautiful Inthe same vein, I mean, this is, this
is heaviness personified in this momentacross an entire group of people who
are experiencing life's highest joysand lowest griefs all at once, all

(48:48):
while, once again, producing theirsixth record as a well known group of
people who are, you know, experiencinga pretty intense moment in their lives.
Uh, and I do think it's worth mentioningas well that A lot of times when we cover
moments like this for artists, this is it.
This is the end.
Or at the very least, this is thepenultimate moment where they're like,

(49:09):
I've only got one more thing in mebefore I'm done with this forever.
They would go on to have, like, thiswas the top of the bell curve for them.
They, they made it throughthis in other ways.
And.
Yeah, it's an amazing testament towhatever they believed that they had
between one another musically, uh, andit's nice to be able to validate that

(49:30):
in retrospect now because it's magical.

Kyle (49:33):
when you filter everything through the next record, four calendar cafe that
came out, I think three full years later,you know, they're in parenthood Robin
Guthrie is still dealing with substanceabuse issues, which like kind of feels
tawdry to talk about, but, um, there'sa totally different air on that record.

(49:55):
Um, somebody mentioned the influenceof can on Susie and the Banes who were
like a spiritual ascendant of this band.
And, and I think maybe there was a directlink of some kind to, to Cocteau twins.
But it reminded me, I was tryingto find an analogy in my mind.

(50:17):
For the difference in vibe between havinga Las Vegas and, and four calendar cafe.
And it felt like the jump fromTago Mago to future days where
they'd gone maximalist and they'dhad this sort of like big moment.
And then they almostsort of had to exhale it.
And there was a, a calm, a steadinessafter, and I know it was, it goes

(50:41):
deeper than that because it like was.
fraught and the band only had a fewmore years before they collapsed
under the weight of themselves.
But you can point to, you know,if you do the Dewey Cox, like, how
can I tell the story of this bandthat lasted a really long time?
You can point to things thatare kind of tropes that exist at
other places, but their story isreally, is really kind of unique.

Cliff (51:05):
yeah.

Kyle (51:06):
and there, there's just so much feeling between them that, that all
came out in the music in a unique way.
And, you know, they were supposed toreunite for Coachella in 2005 and it
didn't happen specifically because, orat least partly because Liz Frazier felt
the full weight of those relationshipsand how they went into the music.

(51:29):
All that to say, when you hear thethickness, when you hear the emotiveness
of the bends of the vocal sounds, um,when you hear the dynamics between
the major and minor shifts some, youknow, through something like the bass,
especially they're putting all that inthere, but not in Not in a literal way.

(51:53):
I think the gift of the Cocteau twinswas they Like we i've been thinking a
lot about that like units of informationthing that we talked about with jeff
buckley last episode they found a way tocompress it into pure dream like energy.
another Rick and Morty reference.
Like the thing like, we tookthe memory of, uh, the best day

(52:14):
you ever had with your daughter.
We put it into a dessert snack.
They could kind of do that withfeeling for real in, in music.
In a way that is like kindof touching at the sublime.

Cliff (52:25):
Yeah.
I mean, even just one more data point tosupport what you're pointing out here.
You mentioned, you know,four calendar cafe.
The band themselves would say thatthat record was itself a response to
this period of time in which therewas a whole lot going on, which
would get worse before it got better.

(52:45):
But point being, by that time,they were on the other side of
Guthrie having gone through rehabsuccessfully, which is itself a pretty
unique story point for an artist.
Usually that doesn't take, you know,the first few times for people.
Um, but he made it through, uh, and thenFrasier, you know, by their own, um,

(53:06):
you know, statements, had gone throughpsychotherapy to help repair some of the
things that she was going through, like,there was a connective tissue together
between these folks that they valued,clearly, it wasn't a regrettable thing.

Kyle (53:21):
sorry, not to make light of that moment, because that is a, that is a
deeply earnest and meaningful point.
But I was just thinking about how youinvoked Metallica at the beginning
of this episode, and I want to gocreate a Wikipedia category page of
bands that went to therapy together.
Drop other examples in the comments.

Cliff (53:41):
things that can, through music culture, trigger you.
Nothing like mentioning that exact video.
I've never gone from being neutral onsomeone to hating them as fast as I
did when I saw that video of Metallica.
Anyway,

Kyle (53:54):
Songs that are about your mom, whether you know it or not.
one thing I did want to ask you about,because you're one of my favorite
gearheads, like, there's a clearyou know, studio as an instrument,
the city as a character type thinggoing on here with Robin Guthrie.
Was there any aspect of thatthat intrigued you, or that you
dialed into, or that you learnedabout and found interesting?

Cliff (54:16):
Mostly, I would say that the more I learned about Robin Guthrie and his
technique and approach here, the more it.
re rooted and supported this growingthing as I try to be more and more
of a student of music itself and the

Kyle (54:34):
As I live and breathe.

Cliff (54:35):
as I live and breathe.
The people who have the bestmusical ideas are not consciously
thinking of them in the way thatwe experience that once we're done.
And like, yeah.
Maybe that sounds boneheaded.
I don't know.
But like this, like this, it's sortof like, uh, maybe it's just going

(54:59):
from a childlike mindset into moreof an adult understanding of things.
But, you know, when you hear music thatreally kind of takes your breath away
and you go, how do they even get there?
And then you, you know, read and learna little bit more about the music,
musicians themselves, and you realize,you know, they've been doing this forever.
They've been working together.
They do this every day.
You sort of get this.

(55:20):
implication in you that, for instance,Robin Guthrie sat down and picked 10
different things to do and then did them.
Just like he sat down, he did them.
He knew what he would do and thenhe did them and then it was done.
Uh, and then maybe people addedembellishments or whatever, but it
was, you know, it was that sort ofthird eye clarity directly on the place
where they would get to and then theyjust know how to make their way there.

(55:44):
When I mentioned earlier that it feelslike this has more to do with King Tubby
than it does, like, Guitar effects ingeneral, like the more I Understood that
everything here was a journey that startedwith something extremely uncomplicated.
Guthrie would remind everyone of that ona regular basis and continues to this day.

(56:06):
Down to the fact that, like whenhe gets interviewed talking about
guitar tones, he would mostlywillingly brag, especially nowadays.
About how he was like, well, Ijust play like 150 squire now.
Cause they're like significantly betterin quality than the super expensive
guitars that we had back then that tookall this work to set up and sound good.
And he was like, like, he just hasthis, LOL, nothing matters vibe.

(56:30):
To his approach to music, and he doesn'teven talk about his time during this
record as if it's like sacred or hehad these magical ideas like every
time he would talk more in detail, itwas just like, Oh yeah, this thing got
curious, piped it through some things,thought about it, ended up in a place
and then the addition of two otherpeople took it to this mountaintop.

(56:54):
Every single time.
Ha

Kyle (56:56):
there is a sound on sound interview.
With him, That speaks toexactly what you just said.
He said, we don't write songs as such.
We come in here, put down all ourideas on the tape machine once,
and then we mix and that's it.
There's no demoing or anything like that.
We're very sort of down to earth about it.
A lot of musicians fantasize thatthere's some sort of artistic

(57:19):
notion that goes into their music.
I don't understand that to me.
If it sounds good, use it.
I don't think about it when a lotof people hear music, then they go
and say, it makes me think of suchand such as if that's what we're
thinking about when we made it.
But me, I'm just thinking ofwhich plug goes in which hole.

Cliff (57:37):
ha ha!
I had not seen this quote when Iwas trying to express this idea!

Kyle (57:42):
Yeah.
So he, he totally validated with evidence.
And they asked him, can you recreate.
One for one, the things that you doin the studio, can you take a piece
of machinery apart and put it backtogether and create a certain effect?
He said, no, that's going a bit far.
What's helped is that when I first walkedinto the studio, I knew how to fix a
module before I knew how to operate it.

(58:02):
And that comes from his work inGrangemouth on an oil refinery, like
dealing around with buttons and stuff.
Um, the shoegaze industry.
he said all these different units.
I like making them do more than theaverage person would take a reverb.
For instance, most people would putit on the snare drum, but me, I then

(58:23):
put it through a chorus and thencompress it and just keep going.
I'm not into this purist idea of what adrum machine should sound like or what
a guitar should sound like with me.
It's, I wonder what would happenif I put this in there, in here.
So you absolutely nailed it.
That validated by first person evidence.

Cliff (58:39):
Hell yeah.
To draw out, though, the kind ofsurprising other side of that same
kind of realization, attack on theguitar is fundamentally different
than how most people play guitar.
And that was something that I thoughtthat I started noticing, but you
can Produce your way towards a lowerattack sensation, if that makes sense.

(59:04):
You can play the guitar howeveryou sort of want and then
produce your way to the thing.
But it felt different.
And then eventually I stumbled acrossa quote where he said, My technique
for playing the instrument is very,very gentle and very, very soft.
Um, And he talks about how a lot ofpeople that try to play music with
a lot of effects, they're reallyoverdoing the playing part, which is

(59:25):
like an absurd sentence, but he saysthey really overdo the playing part.
I'm not playing a guitar.
I'm playing the sound.
I'm playing the pedals.
I'm playing the reverb.
My touch is based upon what I'm hearing.
Which makes me guess he's probably been agood lover to people in the past as well.
Uh, but
got Kyle with that one.

Kyle (59:45):
Oh, in all my years, I,
I've never heard you make amusical comparison like that.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is a newtherapy breakthrough live and on the air.

Cliff (59:59):
My touch is based upon what I'm hearing is a very good methodology
to take into a lot of things.

Kyle (01:00:05):
I'm sorry.
The next time I see your wife, I needto ask her directly and in the face.
Did you know guitar playinginspired your love life?

Cliff (01:00:13):
The answer may surprise you.

Kyle (01:00:17):
Honestly, with your wife, nothing surprises me, and
that's what I love about her.

Cliff (01:00:20):
we'll record this

Kyle (01:00:21):
Everything's a surprise, so nothing is!

Cliff (01:00:26):
So, uh, so my, uh, speaking of cringing out of my skin, so
my, my awkward statements aboutthis aside, Like, that, though,
is

Kyle (01:00:36):
it weird.

Cliff (01:00:38):
That's my job.
That approach is shockingly impactful.
And once I started thinking through theimplications of that and listening to
it, that sort of opened up a new way ofsort of intellectualizing this record,
which you don't have to do with everypiece of music, but sometimes I like
to feel like I understand all of it.

(01:00:59):
Why I like what I'm listening to andhearing it expressed that way helped me
to get it because that also to me alignsvery closely to what Elizabeth Fraser is
doing with her vocals, not only with thestyle itself, but with this glossolalia
concept of like nonsensical syllablesand all this stuff as part of singing.

(01:01:20):
It is not the playing of the instrument.
They are not overdoing the playing ofthe particular instrument in any case.
They are using an effect that they'replaying and using their guitar,
voice, whatever, To ride out whateverit is that they think that they're
seeing or feeling in that effect.
And to me that thinking aboutthat and putting those pieces

(01:01:42):
together sort of unlocked like,Oh, that's why I love this record.
These things work together on purposebecause they were meant to work
together because they built it that way.
It's like an Asynchronous littlewaterfall type process in which they
end up with something very predictableevery time, if you know the ingredients

(01:02:03):
that went into it to begin with.
And like that, that just to, tobe able to draw out why you love a
sound is to me a really cool thingto experience in music and something
that I think is one of the reasonswe like to encourage people to like.
Just nerd out on this shit get betterat listening to music because like when

(01:02:25):
you start to think about and experiencethings and understand them at a deeper
level like you are becoming an expertand what you're Experiencing and like
the depth of what you can do fromthere just grows And so like this was
just another one of those moments forme We're like, I just I had conscious
appreciation of the exercise of listeningto music like this that we do together

Kyle (01:02:45):
The designed waterfall imagery it really resonates with me.
It is not a novel concept to talk aboutalchemy between people in a musical
group and how the whole is greater thanthe sum of its parts, but and this is
specifically important because they recordseparately Or they were by this point.

(01:03:07):
So they're bringing completedpieces and adding to them.
So the effect that they get fromthe completed piece is even more
interesting because it seems designed.
to be alchemic.
It seems designed to weave in and outof each other's space, but that just

(01:03:28):
shows how dialed in they were witheach other by this point, you know,
personal stuff aside, they knew howto work with each other's stuff and
carve out an emotional landscape.
And that's so cool to me because theother nine, 999, 999, 000 whatever

(01:03:48):
artists try to do that and can't.
So that's a, that's a special potentchemistry that they can make it look like
it was woven when it was in fact stacked.

Cliff (01:04:01):
I hate myself for this but It's maybe the best example
of a true yes and exercise.
Trusting through musicians.
Like, like it's literallywhatever it is you did, yes.

Kyle (01:04:14):
For those listening at home, we did B2B sales.
We did improv.
Wow.
We just need one more to completethe punch card of the worst people
you've ever met in your life.
Stick around to see if we can do it.

Cliff (01:04:30):
One of the truly unexpected experiences I think of mine and Kyle's
life are being us inside of way largercompanies than we necessarily ever
expected to work with or inside of.
Which means we bothencounter some of the world's

Kyle (01:04:46):
And just having a job in general, if we're being honest.
The worst.

Cliff (01:04:52):
stories, yes, that itself would shock many people.
Um, But, being exposed to not onlythe best people in the world, but
also, wow, wow, yes, we, we should
You cannot put 100, 000 people ina room and not have a significant

(01:05:13):
percentage of them be the typesof people who don't understand the
joke behind the B2B sales reference.

Kyle (01:05:20):
you think otherwise, buddy, do I have a cult to sell you?

Cliff (01:05:23):
So, bringing forward another one of our exercises that we like to do.
We talked about things thatsurprise you on sort of fresh ears,
active listening and all that.
Another one we like to do then is,okay, subsequent listens from there.
We're locked in.
We sort of have our initial viewpoint onit or our, Feeling or vibe coming into it.

(01:05:45):
And now it's just like kind of repetition.
Well, what can you focus on?
What happens when you listen todifferent things or pay attention
to different aspects of themusic that you're listening to?
So you can draw out bitsof it and all that stuff.
So what did you find was interestingor fun to focus on or isolate
or sort of do with listening?

Kyle (01:06:06):
Layers, just straight up, like, especially once I knew what
an album of layers by design.
This was instead of a, aswirling ice cream of delights.
A few that I really liked where there isa strobing effect right in the middle of
the mix of pitch the baby that I liked.

(01:06:27):
And it reminded me of There's alittle keyboard flourish and sipping
on some syrup by Three Six Mafia,um, which is not a comparison I can
imagine many people have made before.
But it's one of those details that onceyou hear it, it is the main thing you
hear, but not in a grating way, in a waythat you're like, Oh I like that sound.

(01:06:48):
It's like pleasing to my psyche.
In Wolf in the Breast, Liz does a vocalbend up that's then echoed by a little
very almost country ish guitar slide up.
And it's like blink if you miss it, itfeels subconscious because the slide
is, is a little bit buried in the mix.

(01:07:10):
But it echoes, it's just enough beatsoff that it It's like a delay, a dreamy,
psychological type of delay and there'ssome cool twingy little flourishes there.
And then in, Road, River, andRail, there is an atmospheric
layer that feels like baritone sax.

(01:07:32):
almost.
Um, specifically there's that groupborn under club of gore, the, the
sort of like ambient doom jazz groupwhere they stretch out instruments
until they get really lynchy.
And, you know, like they did withthe Justin Bieber song slowed
down 800 percent and it soundedlike a really cool ambient record.
There's some.

(01:07:53):
There's some stretching in additionto like it feels like there's a lot of
compression and density In this recordthat like mushes all into a softness, but
they stretch the taffy as well on a few ofthem the layers do go in really different
directions and textures and I appreciatethat variety but those were Those were

(01:08:15):
a few, that really stood out to me.
I'm also surprised that likethe title track hasn't taken
off as a tick tock audio yet.
Um, there's just something aboutthe, the phasing that they use.
That that feels really timely or tailoredto a time when people are like clearly

(01:08:37):
clamoring through whatever warp nostalgiais happening on the internet right now.
They're like clamoring to cobble arelationship with time and memory.
It feels like a perfect song to do.
Like, I'm wearing my mom's shit fromthe nineties or whatever, you know?
maybe one day it will, maybe ithas, and that pocket just hasn't
reached my for you page yet.

Cliff (01:08:57):
I'm like to try to get to the Cocteau side of Twitter or of TikTok.
Yeah.

Kyle (01:09:01):
Commenting to say on Cocteau Talk.

Cliff (01:09:08):
Oh,

Kyle (01:09:09):
for Cocteau Talk, that's a different thing.

Cliff (01:09:13):
yeah.
Lots of lots of check yourspelling on this episode for sure.
I would agree with you and justdraw out a couple of like particular
aspects of that that were interestingto me when I think about the layers.
One is.
This will be a fun little needle tothread, but you mentioned compression.

(01:09:34):
So, specifically though, not compressionas defined in audio production.
This has actually a lot less ofthat type of compression than,
uh, like the loudness type recordsthat we were talking about before.
However, I know what you mean, andit is great to listen to you, how
the blending, the, like, The exact,correct, volumic, and loudness related

(01:09:59):
blending of all these layers together.
To the degree that none of thembecome foreground versus background,
but are sort of this, like, they'regoing in as a unit into every song.
And to that end, I think a fun exercise,speaking of not overthinking it
don't be a music nerd in this moment.

(01:10:20):
I'm speaking to myself, not you.
Like,

Kyle (01:10:23):
Don't, uh, don't turn on the lights in Space Mountain like the Dissect guy.

Cliff (01:10:27):
Exactly.
So, Picking out what'smelody versus harmony.
So again, don't overthink it here andlike debate with me and like, don't
do the like, it can obviously be in aminor or a major key all the time, bro.
Like I know, I know, I know.
But what I mean by this is

Kyle (01:10:43):
While you were writing this essay, I was busy in public with my friends.
Kissing a human person.

Cliff (01:10:49):
yeah, touching grass so much.
I actually roll it upand keep it in my pocket.
But playing with your.
Your interpretation in a song of whatis supposed to be the main melody
line and what is supposed to beaccompanying this in the moment is
surprisingly not difficult, but like fun.

(01:11:09):
Like it, it catches you off guard because,

Kyle (01:11:12):
It's evasive.

Cliff (01:11:13):
Exactly.
And to try to draw some, some contrast,like, me and you, Kyle, are both lovers
of like riff driven guitar music, thatis melody driven music by any other name.
Like, a particular instrument is carryinga melody, everything else is sort
of playing around or with that idea.

Kyle (01:11:32):
Dude, I did have that thought.
The, that like the Adam Tan boos orthe at the gates type stuff where it's
really melodic riff writing where youcould just listen to the instrumentals
and carry those tunes around in yourhead all day singing them like pop songs.
They definitely have that with theinstrumental arrangements here.

Cliff (01:11:54):
it is related to, but distinct from a pop hook, like there are
memorable aspects of all this musicthat you'll catch yourself singing and
humming around to, but it's almost neverthe, Chorus vocal hook that you would
traditionally expect out of a pop song.
It'll, it'll be the, the intro orsomething tacked on to the end, or

(01:12:14):
like a particular little bit thatyou didn't notice in one of the songs
until you listened to it a few timesthrough, like just trying to dial
in on, is there actually a singularmelody happening in this moment at all?
Or is this sort of just like, Oh,Vibe surfing throughout a key, like
just allowing yourself to approachit that way and sort of intentionally

(01:12:36):
de intellectualize it without dumbingit down because it's not dumb, but
just sort of not overthinking it.
Like to me, that is what helps clickin so quickly with this every time,
like even when you're actively focusedon it, I'm still bobbing my head to
a rhythm that I'm not even activelyfocused on because it just works.
Thanks.

Kyle (01:12:56):
There was a video that I saw Years and years ago when the song
came out, but Tuesday by Maconan andDrake, where music theorists sat at
a piano and played the chords andtalked about how they don't resolve.
And that mirrored the feeling of beingat the club on a weeknight, you know,

(01:13:18):
indicating that you're the type ofperson at a party that never ends.
And a bit in a good way, anda bit in a melancholy way.
And I think of that every timeI listen to that song, but it's
also not like, well, I wonder whatthey were thinking in the studio.
You know, I wonder if Sonnydigital was thinking about that.
The chords don't resolve or whatever.
you can have some fun adding in consciousor subconscious unconscious thought

(01:13:40):
around the thing, but like, don't letit detract from the actual content
which on its face with no thinking is athing that can fill you with feelings.
I think that's what you'retrying to say, right?
Something along those

Cliff (01:13:54):
Yeah.
That's why I love this exploration, man.
Just using musical art as a way to, like,pass your absurdist thoughts through and
try to communicate with another person.
It's magical when we do thesefucking episodes with each other.
I look into your face as my,like, one of my longest friends.
And, like, somehow we are able totalk about shit without ever having

(01:14:17):
to use the right words to do it.
And, like, That's magical everytime, and it's stuff that I love
to give other people through this.
Once again, I'll just always tell people,through this podcast that we pretty much
expected to never do more than a handfulof episodes about, but people keep telling
us is good or helpful or something.

(01:14:37):
But it's fun to track my own personalchanges through it and how it impacts me.
And one of those things, which I kind ofwant to mention before we go into the.
Here are 30, 000 doors for you to exit.
Um, one thing that I feel like I'vegotten better at, that you've always
been good at, Kyle, Uh, because youwould, I remember when you shared

(01:14:59):
with me one day that you, you're like,I made playlists, like, based on,
like, a feeling, and I was like, Mybrain was like, the fuck did he say?
What do you mean?
Like, what do you In what way, you know,and that was always a cool exercise
for me to like try to understand whatit is You were doing through that but
like being able to discern a describablevisceral feeling about a record Is a

(01:15:21):
skill i've become better at throughthese discussions And for me this one
Was the feeling it especially to memapped to Those intense things that
were happening for the band at the timewhere they're experiencing Extreme joy
and grief all at once and for me thisrecord musically and energetically feels

(01:15:44):
like Uh, and I know some people do this.
I don't know if everyone does, butwhen you stand in the shower and you
have no intention whatsoever of doinganything except standing in that
shower and being pummeled with thehottest water you can possibly cook up.
And you're just going to stand thereuntil whatever feeling you have in

(01:16:05):
that moment evaporates and leaves you.
Because there's nothing elseto do except I need to be
overwhelmed by body sensation.
I need to be trapped in aroom that I can't get out of.
I need to sit there.
So to speak in this feeling that sort ofactivates all the you know, the, the heat
is activating something in my body that'strying to release whatever it is I'm

(01:16:28):
going through, whether it's good or bad.
It just becomes sort of an overwhelmingfeeling and you just get to reset a
little bit just standing in the waterKnowing that no one can talk to you
and you can't do anything right nowYou can't like look at your phone like
you can't distract yourself and likethat feeling when you've locked into
something and accepted that like I needto sit here until this leaves me that

(01:16:51):
became my visual of what this album feltlike to me all the way from the the way
that everything thing Is in perfect nonliteral harmony with one another, like
volume wise, it feels like a wash overyou, no matter what sort of headphones
you listen to, whatever frequency isdrawing out has a wash sensation to it.

(01:17:13):
So you get all these differentfeelings of being sort of encapsulated
by the songs that once again don't.
Because the vocals themselves andthe lyrics aren't such a critical
point of the music, it never takesyou out of that overwhelming feeling.
Because I never have to figure outif I understand what she's saying

(01:17:35):
or what she's trying to talk about.
It just is.
And like, It's a real gift tofind records like this because I
don't get it, especially outsideof heavy music very often.
Um, but this one did that for me andI will enjoy returning to this record
when I want to feel that feeling again.
Ha ha

Kyle (01:17:54):
that was so thoughtfully put.
I kind of experienced the feelings bitthe opposite way you do, which is why
I so enjoy having these conversations.
Like the blanking out bit for me is likestaying at the surface, not going into
the big, deep, like I just envision theconsciousness inside my body is a big ass

(01:18:15):
house or like a big plane, physical planethat I'm a small thing in the middle of.
Like I'm a, I'm a huge cosmic body witha little brain person inside of it in
the middle and the staving it off theblanking out bit is staying up at the
very top, right outside the elevatorbefore it goes down and, Uh, that's

(01:18:39):
the place that I normally like to live.
That's why I like shit like the Stooges.
Like, it just is what it is.
Like, come have a beer before you get inthe elevator and think about your feelings
or whatever, you know what I mean?
Like, fucking trash the lamp orwhatever in this waiting room.

Cliff (01:18:52):
ha!

Kyle (01:18:52):
it's literal and feral and blues and you know, there's there's nothing
more to it than what it is it's a bigexercise and it's a lot of physical travel
To go down into the depths of yourself,which I think is what this record does
but I think what's so beautiful aboutit is They see a beautiful place down
in the middle of it and i'm specificallythinking about liz in this way But

(01:19:13):
this also applies to the to the twogentlemen where They want to come back
up the elevator and describe it to you.
And that's what the offering of thisrecord is like the walls are these
beautiful colors, and there's a greatview of a grassy knoll outside, and
there's all these things happening.
So, it's the blankness that you'redescribing in the sense that.

(01:19:35):
Like, oh, I found a peaceful placeat the center, or I'm longing for a
peaceful place that I haven't reachedat the center of my consciousness, slash
the cosmos, slash, you know, the, thegolden thread between that macro out in
the universe and that thing inside me.
And I'm feeling like anyone who's neverdone psychedelics can't really understand
or visualize what we're talking about.

(01:19:58):
But it's real.
And, and I hope it's likea therapeutic exercise.
People can take a record like thisand envision that bigness inside of
themselves and maybe extract your own.
Beautiful thing that doesn't need tobe too literal or like anything you've
ever seen, you know just start likeputting colors places or singing in
a weird language or writing your ownhieroglyphics or Something just like

(01:20:20):
extract that big feeling of describingthe huge universe inside you to
other people I know that's what thecreative process is just described
in maybe kind of a freaky way And

Cliff (01:20:33):
Man, I love that.
Reminds me of that album title fromCloudkicker, uh, Let Yourself Be Huge.
And I remember that phrase just stuckin my brain and, you know, as a closely
related sibling to that MarianneWilliamson quote, uh, from a unique
person, but it's a pretty good quote.
yeah, finding yourself in that space andgetting comfortable with it, um, it's,

(01:20:57):
a blankness that's much more reminiscentof a, so to speak, successful meditation
session than it is, getting too drunk andnot being able to think about anything.
It's not really that, yeah.

Kyle (01:21:10):
I I think you and I are both really striving to You offer a
visualization exercise, a spiritualvisualization exercise of sorts.
Because I think everybody's feelingsome version of that and trying
to ascribe something to that,you know, all the longing about
like, what, what is my purpose?

(01:21:31):
Who am I?
Why am I?
There's not an answer at the end of theexercise, but there's a direction that
you can go in and the really, reallybeautiful works of art throughout history.
And I love that I saw a lot ofcomparisons to visual artists.
uh, Rothko and Agnes Martin andminimalist interpretive type artists.

(01:21:52):
The mark of a really great artistis it, it helps you find your
own way to truth and to beauty.
And I hope like if even one person listensto this record and uncovers some, some
beautiful truth about themselves or thecommunity they live in or their family or.
You know somebody they care about thenthat's a that's a win and I think that's

(01:22:14):
Something that the three members ofthis group would be deeply delighted by

Cliff (01:22:19):
I love it.
Speaking of, uh, right turns, let's takeone out of earnestness just into you.
Let's play another round of we'rebetter than your stupid algorithm
because your algorithm can never becred and we can at least try to be.
I don't know, do a pretty good job at it.
But like we mentioned earlier, like thisis another one of those gifts of records

(01:22:40):
that will take you in a lot of directions.
You can go in all of them, or ifyou hate some of them, all good,
you have plenty of space to play.
And so many things can be kind oftraced back to this, but it is mostly
once again about a discovery exercise,which we enjoy sending other people on.
Even though, I mean, we don't, we don't.

(01:23:01):
Make any money by sending people to music.
In fact, the people who make themusic don't make any money when
you stream their music either.
But like, yeah, but like, we'redoing it for the love of the game.
There is so much joy in discoveringsomething new because a sound or
an idea sent you in a direction.
So, let's do it.
Where do you want to start?

Kyle (01:23:19):
Let's talk about the impact of this record and you listed a
few and i'll i'll just augment Uh,

Cliff (01:23:28):
to find people directly and objectively saying, yes, Cocteau
Twins, yes, that one, that, that is us.
And, it, You get a nice smorgasbordof different people, even just
from the Direct Quotes Club.
So, going on a little journeyhere, first of all The Weeknd, uh,
sampled Cocteau Twins and was like,it is clearly an unabashed fan.

(01:23:52):
And then in interviews with CocteauTwins members, they cite that as well
as being something they're proud of.
Cool with like excited about,um, that it was sampled.
So there's, you can probablyalready imagine if a weekend song
popped into your head just now,you can start tracing that lineage.
If you'd like other places, you know,this was a record released in 1990.

(01:24:12):
And like we talked about not onlycontributed to dream pop, but also
shoegaze From a number of perspectives,uh, and so there's a ton of stuff to dive
into there, especially if that's not anaspect of music you've explored a ton yes,
My Bloody Valentine is in there and allthat, but like, Lush, who was sort of like

(01:24:32):
an OG shoegaze band Slow Dive, Even likebands like Mazzy Star from the 90s, like
kind of those underrated bands that, thatshot out a few hits that were really cool.
So there was like a lot ofinspiration happening in that time.
In the moments in between both The Weekndand the bands that were formed in the
early 90s, I mean, you've got Deftones,you've got M83, Japanese Breakfast,

(01:24:57):
Beach House, all of these differentlittle, you know, You know, uh, flagship
artists in very different genres, justpointing directly back to either this
record or this band and this period oftime in general as like truly inspiring
their approach to sound especially.
A theory, real layerbuilding around their music.

(01:25:20):
And, uh, I think also, you know, Hard topull out a direct quote about this, but
also inspired, I think, a lot of thesebands to, again, not overthink particular
things that are considered to be staplesof music, like, Oh, I need a very strong
lyrical direction and clear vocals.
Like, well, she didn't,and they made this.

(01:25:40):
So I think I'll chill out, you know?

Kyle (01:25:43):
I would add in the vocal influence or Dream pop succession lineage a bunch
more things you can get all the way downto like Arca who do, you know, fragmented
Bjerke type stuff, um, but there'sdefinitely some, some influence there,

(01:26:06):
uh, Lana Del Rey and then there's a lotof stuff like if you look at Like Cocteau
twins and like my bloody valentine as acontinuum between maybe like punk true
punk uh, sex pistol stooges mc5 guitary crunchier stuff being the my bloody
valentine world and then roxy music davidbowie art arty stuff coming down the pipe

(01:26:34):
to Cocteau twins Somewhere between thosetwo, you're gonna find stuff like the
first few Sleepy Sun records with RachelFannin like Stereolab weaving in some of
the like trip hoppy stuff too, so likeLetitia Saviour I think Chelsea Wolf,
who we talked about before as a greatexample, FK twigs, you mentioned earlier

(01:26:55):
in the episode bat for lashes, JuliannaBarwick way as blood, uh, why Oak, the
XX Jamie XX is another great example.
You mentioned beach house.
Like I would specifically pointto them because they are on
belly union, Simon Raymond's.
label.

Cliff (01:27:14):
Oh, I didn't even remember that.
Okay.

Kyle (01:27:16):
like that to me seems like they're a bit anointed.
The, the group that is gettingcompared to Cocteau Twins being signed
to his label is like, yeah, they'rea spiritual successor for sure.
So Victoria Lagrange,another, another great voice.
Marissa Nadler also on Bella Union.
Bella Union itself is a great rabbithole of like, emotive, washy type stuff.

(01:27:39):
Personal favorite of mine, JonathanWilson is on is on Bella Union.
So if you're into the like more Dylany type fare, as is father John Missy,
as is the Dirty Three, Warren Ellisand then because they're huge, I feel
like I should also make a connection tocigarettes after sex and men I trust.
There's a there's aline from this to that.

(01:28:02):
And then you mentioned slow dive.
I think like ride isanother great example.
Jesus and Mary chain.
I just saw unwound pretty recently.
They, they started to take it into darkerterritory, but I think you could, if you
want a little bit of the darker stuff,you could start going in that direction.

(01:28:22):
We talked about Holyfawn on Friday, heavy.

Cliff (01:28:25):
Oh, yeah.

Kyle (01:28:26):
It's another
example, slow crush very muchin the, in the lineage of like
now shoegaze is famous there.
Their personal favoritecrumb is another one.
There's a band from Athens that Ireally, really love called new Madrid.
That I, I like this one newMadrid record, magna queen,

(01:28:46):
magna King for the same reasons.
I like heaven or Las Vegas.
There's a, uh, Where thatfeels like being in a dream.
This feels like being the new Madridrecord feels like being delusional
in the Georgia summer heat, youknow, kind of getting like haze
deer hunter, another Georgia band.
And then in addition to deftones, Iwould also say the smashing pumpkins

(01:29:07):
who have done cool stuff with.
with guitar chaining.
And then if you want to go reallyheavy, a lot of people like loathe,
for, for a very, very current example.
And then there's also like the wholerabbit hole of slow core stuff like
duster, that mixes things with,whole strains of different feelings.
but I think getting at sortof the same dreamlike state.

Cliff (01:29:29):
Right on.
I'm gonna keep going.
There's more.
Those are all awesome.
Especially exploring some of thepotential fringes of this stuff to
go in especially weird directions.
Before I get to those fringesthough, you mentioned Lana Del Rey.
I think for Bye for I say this withsincerity, uh, if you're not a self

(01:29:51):
described, like, deep musical nerdat this point, but Lana Del Rey was
something that went, oh, okay, yeah,I know, I know that, I got you.
Cool, that's fine.
That's an avenue worth pursuing too.
I would encourage you to thinkabout things that could be sort of
spiritually mapped along that track.
Without trying to be too contentious,like, Tame Impala is a band that does,

(01:30:11):
generally speaking, a similar sort oflike, introduction to psych type thing,
uh, that I, I think is aligned with whatLana Del Rey has done or is doing Purity
Ring is a band that I really wantedto bring back and bring back up here
again to kind of explore Those are justthree bands that will take you in weird

(01:30:33):
directions, but that your friends willstill know if you mention those bands.
So, I think that's a coolplace to start if you want to
or you're not sure where to.
I think a couple of fringyish directions or a few.
One of them would be like the postrock and ambient stuff that was and

(01:30:55):
is a spiritual descendant of this.
Many of these bands can directlypoint to, early nineties type music,
not only Cocteau Twins, but, evenbands like Melvin's, like stuff
that was happening in the nineties.
You can see it develop into longerterm, like weirder and more ethereal
types of guitar driven music inthat sense, uh, especially if you're

(01:31:17):
on like the calmer side of things.
Uh, I mentioned Mono earlier.
That's a band we've covered a lot who haslike direct ties with Steve Albini and
the early nineties and all that stuff.
So there's, there is a lineage there.
But we also mentioned Seeger Rose.
I.
While they were not a band who the entiretime was directly inspired by Cocteau

(01:31:38):
twins Kyle, you found a quote from jonesyabout basically they kept getting compared
to Cocteau twins and didn't like ituntil jonesy started listening to them
and Was good with it to the degree thathe got Elizabeth Fraser to sing on, uh,
one of the songs on his solo record.
And, uh, again, just, just bringing backup that little mantra of like, when really

(01:32:00):
cool artists go, Oh yeah, that shit rules.
Pay attention.
They're probably right about it.
Or at least there's something coolthat's being discovered there.

Kyle (01:32:09):
You know, Liz Frazier post Cocteau Twins has been so
interesting because she has largely,I think you could characterize
it as walking away from music.
But has, Um, I've done some reallythoughtful collaboration, one of which
is that when you just mentioned themost famous one, obviously, is with
Massive Attack, and she sang withthem live at the anniversary shows

(01:32:32):
for that record mezzanine my favoritepart of, That whole thing, like,
other than the fact that she has said,like, pretty directly, I was singing
about Jeff Buckley in a grieving way.
The lyrics were inspired by thephilosopher Gaston Bachelard,
who was an influence on Foucault,Lacour, Derrida, Pierre Bordeaux.

(01:32:56):
And Bachelard was interesting becausehe was in, epistemologist, like he
was a thinker around the nature ofknowledge and knowing, um, which I think
like spiritually gets at some of thedirection of what Liz Frazier was trying
to do with her vocals and lack thereof.
But he also had He popularized theidea of the Ophelia complex, like in

(01:33:19):
reference to Shakespeare's Opheliawhich is described as a nexus of
ideas linking the dissolution of theself, male or female, with immersion
in the feminine element of water,as symbolized by Ophelia's drowning.
Which is kind of spooky, likewhen you conspiracy theory, tie it
to Jeff Buckley or, or whatever.
But like I, I just sense a cosmiclink between all those things.

(01:33:43):
And I'm also really inspired by thesmarts behind that kind of thing.
Like that Liz Frazier is the kind ofartist who's just casually reading.
Like modern philosophers andlayering in 10, 000 inputs of
thought into words that neither younor necessarily she can discern.

(01:34:04):
And then all that to say, Um, I wasthinking about like what other vocalists
if you like specifically Liz Fraser'svocals would you also like, and, you
know, beyond thinking about like BelindaButcher from my bloody Valentine or Beth
Gibbons from Portishead or Bjork or SineadO'Connor, Hope Sandoval from Mazzy Star.

(01:34:29):
All those people you mentioned andthen some more Sade is another great
example.
I was like, I bet Hayley Williamswould kill some Cocteau Twins stuff.
And then I went to listen to her solorecord, Petals for Armor, to see if
there was anything Cocteau Twins y.
And then I saw a single calledTeardrop, and lo and behold, it was

(01:34:50):
a cover of the Massive Attack song.
And, you know, I talked about the runsand the interesting flitters that only
Liz Frazier can do and damn if HayleyWilliams didn't give it a real good go.
People that love paramore Are areintense about how she's like one of
the best singers around but I thinkpeople who like put up the pop wall

(01:35:13):
around paramore don't realize what aPhenomenal like maybe vocalists She is
And you can, you can sense that in herapproximation of Liz Frazier's vocals
you know, that, that, and the fact thatlike when they played Wembley pretty
recently, she did the Freddie Mercurything that Queen live at Wembley did.

(01:35:38):
But there's, there's a lot tounpack just with like really
great sort of singular vocalists.
In the spirit of Liz, even ifthey don't sound exactly like her.

Cliff (01:35:46):
Totally.
To explore maybe another direction,or sort of fringy bit I'm going to
basically incorrectly summarize all ofthis stuff as like, chill wave, just,
Let's just label this bucket show wave.

Kyle (01:36:01):
like dream pop.
It's got a bad name, but it kind of works

Cliff (01:36:05):
it's, it

Kyle (01:36:06):
there.
There's a new sensation happening.
Let's label it before we're ready.

Cliff (01:36:10):
it is an evocative enough phrase to slap on the outside of this container.
Uh, so inside of that, uh, areartists that will make you seem cool
to people including Washed Out andToro Moi or even if you want to, you
know, get a little bit less weird.
Again, I, I kind of knowingly realizedthat he doesn't fit in this particular

(01:36:34):
container, but like Tycho, like thesort of like light feeling ethereal,
it is maybe made from electronics,but maybe not type of stuff.
Um, those are all directions thatyou can pursue that have sort of
varying levels of personality.
of psychedelia or dream poppinessor shoegaziness or whatever,

(01:36:56):
but piped through other forms ofinstrumentation or production for music.
If you want to really touch a weirdfringe, I realized because we saw them
recently in Brooklyn the armed is maybea very good far out place you can go
if you're like, okay, that feeling ofbeing overwhelmed by lushness, I would

(01:37:19):
like to turn that up until it clips.
Like, okay, the armed and ultrapop and some of the stuff that they
are trying to do over there, whilefundamentally different sonically than
this record at all, has moves that smella lot like what was happening here.
Uh, and just, yeah, seeing
them live once

Kyle (01:37:40):
dream pop, dream pop and awake pop.

Cliff (01:37:44):
Yeah, just seeing them do that live once again just reminded me that
like, no, I need to remember that thearmed is like, it is a house with a little
door that goes under the front porch.
And if you can shove a few people insideand tell them to crawl in the right
direction, they will end up in a verycool house that they never would have
walked in the front door of before.

(01:38:06):
So I'm just going to keep doing it.
Because if you end up liking bands likethat, then all of your friends think
you're weird and cool at the same time.
And, I gotta tell you, that'sthe balance you want to strike.

Kyle (01:38:16):
I also Googled, you know, like recommended if you like, and forums are
the best place to find the algorithmbreaking stuff, you know, where you
get a peek into somebody's brain.
It's like, I literally neverwould have thought of that.
And it's just stuff on one person'smixtape, you know, in one in
Kenosha, Wisconsin or whatever.

(01:38:38):
Somebody in a forum suggestedRocksteady and Philly soul.
For like ethereal vocals.
So somebody suggested CornellCampbell specifically, somebody
suggested the Delphonics, uh, theflamingos and even Smokey Robinson.
Uh, and then one other person name checkedJohn Anderson from yes, who did similar

(01:38:59):
strange layering things with vocals.
So, if you're looking for likesingularity and want to push into
like way different ways to do.
Kind of the same thing.
Any of those might be options as well.
And like you've invoked King Tubbya number of times on this episode.
It can't be underscored enough.
King Tubby, Tangerine Dream,people that are doing interesting

(01:39:22):
things with technology as aninstrument, sort of expanding the
possibilities of human vibration.
I think all of that belongs inthe same school for that reason.

Cliff (01:39:32):
We could go on and on, but we won't.
HOpefully that sends you in a directionor at the very least stops you at
the station of this record, if youhaven't spent a lot of time there.
One of the gifts of picking an album,uh, especially off the calendar
thing, which like we, we made andlike love that it exists in general.

(01:39:54):
But the magic of this is justlike you, you pick up one of
these albums and you go, well.
I know that it's supposed to be important.
Let's figure out if I can reverseengineer why, uh, in just like a making
your way into how it can have a personalimpact on you, everything we've talked
about, whether it's just like how toexperience the record or how to, you
know, more accurately describe a visceralfeeling that it gives you or chasing

(01:40:18):
all the downstream artists from there.
These are all little truly, nonironically magical things that can just
happen to you on a day to day basis.
Like, I know we talk about this almostevery episode now, but it is a practice
that gets built up and becomes somethingthat's, like, really rewarding.
And it's cool to be able to doit to albums that you have a

(01:40:40):
hard time getting because youcan draw a lot out of something.
But then For me, like with this one,you also have these moments where
it's like, I feel like I have beenlistening to this record my whole life,

Kyle (01:40:52):
I've unlocked the

Cliff (01:40:53):
than I actually have.

Kyle (01:40:54):
Yeah.

Cliff (01:40:55):
And that's, that is itself a really cool experience, which,
you know, you mentioned comparisonsto visual art and all that.
Like, I mean, you got to go to a physicalplace to go see if you can have that
experience from a lot of visual art.
You know, you can try to approximateit through a video or a picture, but a
lot of times you got to see the thingin person to get there and just, not

(01:41:16):
to overstate it, but it's, it is such agift to exist at a time where basically
all of recorded histories, music exists,uh, a few clicks away from you for
the dramatically underpriced monthlysubscription fee that we are charged.
Uh, and the fact that you can transportyourself into things like this and learn
so much so quickly, it's just like.

(01:41:37):
What else is there?
What else is better than figuring outyour own version of doing this through
the things you encounter in life?
Just makes me happy.

Kyle (01:41:45):
But hopefully the feeling that you get the first time you listen to this
record because we, you know, we talkedabout the immediacy again and again.
Hopefully as you go out and journey youremember and give thanks to this record
is hopefully a new center point of sorts.
Like I know this will be for me.
I think this, when we get to a hundredepisodes, I'll think back to Cocteau

(01:42:05):
Twins and that'll be one of the onesthat we mentioned again and again,
like I've done with Alice Coltraneand, uh, and Bjork and others.
I'm thankful to have this new anchorpoint and I hope that it's an anchor point
for people listening to this as well.