Cocteau Twins - Heaven Or Las Vegas
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Free Music Notes for Heaven Or Las Vegas
Free Music Review: Building A Mystery
Hit: 5 Stars
This is one of my all time favourite cds, I only wish they would have included the b side "Watchlar", which is on the "Iceblink Luck" 12 inch. It would have been a perfect inclusion for the remaster. I only have the original cd, and according to one review, I'm not really missing out on anything, thank goodness. My favourtie track is "fifty fifty clown". I wish I could have one day with the Cocteau Twins and ask them to decifer some of the songs, but maybe that would ruin the magic of their music.Free Music Review: Remastered
Hit: 5 Stars
The clarity and balance in this remaster is worth replacing your old copy. I was not sure after reading other reviews, but rest assured you will have a new reason to play these albums over and over.Free Music Review: ALCEU NATALI' S CLASSIC ALBUMS: A TREASURE HIDDEN IN HEAVEN
Hit: 5 Stars
INTRODUCTION
During the last 15 years I have seen lists of the 'Best Albums Of All Time', published, mainly, by English and American magazines. I have tried my best but I could never listened to most of those 'great' albums without skipping various tracks. I ask myself if it is a question of taste or prejudice. Maybe both. For instances, when I see The Beastie Boys and Eminem among the English magazine Q's 100 best albums of all time, inevitably, my dark side comes to light: 'I'd rather see those rappers and hip hoppers murdering the ears of music lovers than murdering people in the streets'. Here goes another example: the absence of The Who's album My Generation among the 100 best of that magazine makes me wonder whether these magazines 'reviewers' really listen to music at all. In my country, people say that 'taste' is something that cannot be disputed, but the other day my wife added: 'taste is something that cannot be disputed but to be sorry about'. And she is pretty damn right because what you find and do not find in those 'lists' is something to be deeply sorry about. For someone like me, who loves rock and pop music, it is impossible to take seriously any list of the best albums of all time that is not topped by Beatles' albums. The Rolling Stone magazine Greatest Albums of All Time have some respect for The Beatles and included 8 albums of theirs among the 100 greatest, however among their 500 greatest you will not find such a precious stone like Heaven Or Las Vegas but you will find those 'music murderers' I mentioned above and also a lot of albums that are not good enough to be part of the 10,000 greatest of all time. Lest the new generations think I am just a dinosaur of the 60's, I anticipate that I am not the kind of guy who spends hours listening to the complete collections of the greatest bands of the golden decade. I love rock and pop music from all decades. As a matter of fact, I have more CDs from the last two decades than from the 60's, 70's and 80's. Nowadays, with the invention of the MP3, people do not need anymore to buy a whole album only because of a few good songs. The music lovers can download from internet only the songs that they like and that means that within a couple of years or so there will be no more CDs for sale. Then, instead of a collection of CDs on his/her shelves, the music lover will have an anthology of songs in his/her iPOD. And I wonder if we are going back to the 60's when only singles were bought while an album was a luxury, something to be bought only as a Christmas gift, or just a tricky marketing strategy to make some extra money on a couple of hits repacked together with a bunch of disposable fillers. As you may remember or not, it was The Beatles with their unmatched talents who made albums become a new form of art and be taken seriously by the media and the public. Anyway, I am already familiar with the iPOD but I am not the kind of anthological guy. Lately, I started prospecting what I call 'classic' albums, but classic for me is not an album made only of masterpieces in all tracks, or an habitue of radio's hit parades and famous magazines' lists. Furthermore, there is no perfect album. Classic for me is a damn good album, from the very first track to the last one. That album that you listen to all the way without skipping a track and without wishing a certain track reaches its end soon because your favorite one comes next. I have prospected many of those types of albums but you will not see most of my 'classics' in those 'famous and respectable' lists made by journalists as mediocre as music reviewers as I am as an artist or a writer. If you ask me about my prospecting criteria, all I can tell you is that those who have 'good ears' for music do not need more than 30 seconds of each track of an album to know whether it is classic or not. That's what I do. When I am looking for new bands I listen to the 30 seconds of every track of their albums available at Amazon until I find my classic one. My musical sense of smell is infallible. When I listen to the entire CD that had that smell of classic stemming from the 30 seconds of each one of its tracks there is no mistake about it: it is a classic! On the other hand, I already own about 2,000 CDs of different bands and among them there are various classic ones. Heaven Or Las Vegas is one of them.
THE TRACKS
1. Cherry-Coloured Funk is a thick and corpulent song, with instruments and vocals filling the space. It is a simple but classic melody, soft and tranquil. It progresses from low vocal notes until it reaches a peak, while the celestial chords sound all the time in the background as if they were playing in a nearby room, and the same goes for the discrete but scoring bass. 2. Pitch The Baby is faster with a more prominent and pointed bass and higher vocal notes. The heavenly atmosphere permeates the song all over. It is a forewarning of track 6 and displays a melodic progression from the first track that culminates with 3. Iceblink luck, a very beautiful pop song, in which both vocals and instruments play with intensity and devotion. Only the drums are muffled to leave room for the fight between the enchanting vocals and the gorgeous instruments for the thrilling climax to the show. 4. Fifty-Fifty Clown is a masterpiece. It has a timelessly futurist sound. Only Strawberry Fields Forever by The Beatles has a similarly complex and beautiful melodic progression. The first part is very difficult to be sung. You cannot whistle it even after listening to it ten times in a row and that means it required a lot of talent to be invented. 5. Heaven Or Las Vegas is similar to Iceblink Luck, less intense and more rhythmical, and equally beautiful. Beth Fraser's vocals are devastating. Iceblink Luck and Heaven Or Las Vegas are Cocteau Twins' couple of their most pop songs, a pair of explosion of joy. 6. I Wear Your Ring is another masterpiece. It is a song that was waiting for someone to create it and it was up to the Cocteau Twins to do it. Beth Fraser' vocals, the bass and the rest of the instruments are amazing and trance inducing. The second and final part is pure ecstasy, one of the best moments of pop music. 7. Fotzepolitic is moved by the beauty of the previous track, celebrates its splendor and makes sure not to challenge its royalty and, at the same time, pays it a sublime homage and becomes a metaphor of that masterpiece. 8. Wolf In The Breast is a prime and a proof that, definitely, the Cocteau Twins were wounded with a Cupid arrow of excellence and made another masterpiece of a simple ballad. After six breathtaking tracks, enters 9. Road, River And Rail, a more lamenting ballad that is not deprived of any of the refinements of the previous tracks and 10. Frou-frou Foxes In Midsummer continues that lamenting for a while but ends with an explosion of vibrant and fire working sound that fills the air again, like a farewell tune adequate to the last track of a fantastic album.
FINAL COMMENTS
I met a guy who loves rock and pop music like I and who has the same taste and prejudice I do, but one day he grinned with irony when I told him I found the Cocteau Twins great. 'Why do not you share a kitchenette with them?' asked me the same guy who declared that the Brazilian 'bossa nova' is the greatest revolution in music of all time. Well, bossa nova is a kind of music easily found in every corner of Rio de Janeiro City or even in casinos in Las Vegas, but the Cocteau Twins' sound is a treasure hidden in heaven and finding it out demands as much talent as the Cocteau Twins needed to produce Heaven Or Las Vegas.
Alceu Natali
Free Music Review: I prefer the original CD
Hit: 4 Stars
What IS it about the shrill highs and boomy lows of so many remasters that enamors listeners? This is my favorite Cocteau Twins album, but I was profoundly disappointed in the remastered version. I will keep my beloved 1990 original with its wonderful mid-ranges (and PLENTY enough of high and low frequencies) in my library....and donate the remaster version I recently bought to my local library. By the way, even with a version I don't much like, the title cut still brings tears to my eyes after all these years.Free Music Review: Can't stop listening to it.
Hit: 5 Stars
I remember listening to the Cocteau Twins for the first time in 1992, when I bought this album (a vinyl record at the time). I didn't pay much atention to it, although I thought it was ok. Now, 15 years later, I bought it again on CD, because I saw the band's name written on a website and it reminded me of them. I was mesmerized at the first listen. Maybe because I was 17 at the time, I just wasn't ready for it. I can't stop listening to this record. The Twins don't sound like nothing that was recorded since then, and they're still ahead of time, even in 2007. Songs like Cherry-Coloured Funk, Iceblink Luck, Heaven or Las Vegas and I Wear Your Ring don't come around often...and I'm not a guy who doesn't know enough music. I own over 2,000 CDs and, even so, the Cocteau Twins amazed me at so many levels. Now I'm gonna have to buy the rest of their catalog...