COCTEAU TWINS – FOUR-CALENDAR CAFE

Four Calendar Cafe’, the seventh and penultimate studio album by Cocteau Twins, has just turned thirty and in January, 4AD will reissue both it and the 1996 follow-up, Milk & Kisses, in the United States on black vinyl + CD. This will mark the first official vinyl pressing outside of Europe. Robin Guthrie returned to his original studio mixes and has delivered stunning, brand new 24-bit masters of both titles. Named after a passage in William Least Heat-Moons book Blue Highways in which he rates eateries by the number of calendars they have hanging, 1993s Four Calendar Cafe’ was the first of two Cocteau Twins albums released via Fontana / Capitol Records after their long association with 4AD ended on a high with 1990s landmark LP, Heaven or Las Vegas. Like most Cocteau Twins works before it, Four Calendar Cafe’ was recorded and produced by the band, this time at their September Sound studio on the banks of the Thames in West London. A beautiful yet bittersweet record featuring the singles Bluebeard, Evangeline and Summerhead, the band manifest maturity and fragility in equal measure and while Lizs lyrics remain cryptic, shes purposefully being more intelligible and honest. Complete with a memorable design of inanimate objects by the I Spy childrens book creator Walter Wick, Four Calendar Cafe’ still stands tall going in to its fourth decade.