Mid-Week Music: Cocteau Twins - "Kookaburra"
2022-02-02. I’m not into numerology, but I do get a frisson from dates like this.
1985 was my prime year for music. I remember music in my bones from this, my 15th year, like no other. I still listen to music that I first purchased and heard then, perhaps more than any other single slice of time. I would take the bus to Believe in Music and dig into the imports bin and spend my scant cash on mysterious-looking records, wrapped in their crinkly plastic, from Factory and 4AD. Another day I would go to Woodland Mall and buy more mainstream music on cassette to play on my “personal portable stereo” (my euphemism for a boombox that I used to convince my parents to let me get it). A few lucky times I was driven to record shows by older high school friends and got access to the rare items I had only heard of through word of mouth or ‘zines. Spin Magazine debuted in 1985. Madonna was on the cover and the record reviews included Naked Raygun’s Throb Throb and New Order’s Low-life, both of which I still have (and literally have had several copies of each).
Aikea-Guinea was one of those Believe In Music records, a gorgeous 12” artifact that looked like the endpapers of an old book to me, the names of the songs engraved in Copperplate on the cover. The music felt just as majestic and stately as the package. I say “felt” because the experience was multi-sensory. I remember the warmth of the room as I lay on the shag carpeting of our house, the smell, the feeling of the record sleeve in my hands as I would listen, letting the music seep into me. We didn’t have the internet or streaming services. Just our records, our cassettes, and friends to share with (‘zines and NME and Melody Maker, each only available sporadically at very special stores, notwithstanding). Cocteau Twins were mysterious and beautiful and seemingly from another dimension.
“Kookaburra” is the song on this record that I go back to the most. The drums propulse forward, the multi-layered guitars like shimmering waves, the high-register, throaty bass guitar playing its own distinctive melody. And Elizabeth Fraser’s voice. I can’t talk about it in 2022 without sounding clichéd, but she was on another planet, her diction and esoteric lyrics and effortless dancing between notes swirling like an instrument I had never heard before. The song is an explosion of emotion that’s almost over as soon as it begins, but time stops for me when I listen to it.
I love you,
David
