8. Cocteau TwinsTreasure
There’s a direct line here from The Mission soundtrack, because how I came up with the chorus from ‘Feed the Tree’ was trying to figure out what Elizabeth was saying on Treasure. I can’t actually remember what song it was. I’ve tried, but I can’t figure it out, because I got the lyrics and I immediately ran off … but it was definitely Treasure, because I was listening to that nonstop during that period. I love the fact that you have to go through this process where you’re sort of like, "What is she saying? I’m gonna try to figure out what she’s saying." And then you just stop caring. The second you stop caring, that’s when you really dive into the Cocteau Twins. Because her voice as an instrument is the focus. Treasure was the first album of theirs that I heard, when we were first playing in Providence as teenagers, we got adopted by the Rhode Island School of Design students. They were 90% of our audience at the time. And the Cocteau Twins was the RISD mascot band. So we started getting invited to these college gatherings, which was of course spectacular to a 16-year-old. And the Cocteaus were on at all of these parties. These smart lovely college students were validating what we were doing in a way. That’s what the Cocteaus mean to us. They played a huge part in why we reached out to 4AD. So later, when I actually knew them as people, I tried to tell them awkwardly what that meant, that they were the voice of that time in a way. They were like, "Okay… let’s move on from this."
