My Top 1000 Songs #793: Carolyn's Fingers

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

This is the song that should have had all the old-school Cocteau Twins fans howling cries of "sell out!" Their haunting, goth-tinged early work had been gradually growing brighter, more shimmering, almost mainstream-friendly, but Elizabeth Fraser's imaginary lyrics & operatic vocals were still well outside the mainstream. Yet 1988's Blue Bell Knoll represented a pretty clean break, introducing their slightly more commercial era--ok, Fraser was still uniquely Fraser, but the production was given a slick, warm sheen that made it feel more like new age music than the dark atmospherics of yore.

So why is the opening cut off that record here on the list? Cuz damn it sounds freakin' great. As with the rest of the Cocteau Twins Mach II era the record heralded, there was still nothing in the universe that sounded quite like the Cocteau Twins, and if they wanted to give their spooky ambient vibes a sun-kissed shellac coating, that's fine with me.

Live 1994: