Two double-cd sets collecting all of the Cocteaus' singles, b-sides and eps, covering 1982-1990 and 1993-1996 respectively (interestingly, both on 4ad even though some if not all of the band's recordings from the latter period were put out on different labels)...
Most of the stuff from the first volume was already familiar to me - the Cocteaus really were an outfit whose ep output was just as good as their lps, and I've tracked most of it down in the past - but I hadn't heard much of the really early, gothier and more dissonant stuff, and I get a kick out of listening to it now, knowing where they were headed. (Also, I hadn't known that there was an alternate version of "Pearly-Dewdrops' Drops" out there, though I prefer the more concise version on Stars and Topsoil.) And listening to the second disc in particular, which runs through the Tiny Dynamine, Echoes In A Shallow Bay and Love's Easy Tears eps before finishing with the coda of the Iceblink Luck single, is a real reminder of just how astonishingly great the Cocteau Twins were at their peak.
A fair bit of volume 2 is new to me, and listening to the music on that set isn't like listening to any Cocteau Twins record released before 1993 - by '93, the glory days were over and their sound was just a bit too smooth, and what we were left with was a pleasant but largely indistinct melange, like snow lightly flecked with faint sparkles. But a bit of the magic is still there (more so on Milk & Kisses than Four-Calendar Cafe), and so it proves to be with these songs, all of which basically wash over one in that pretty gauzey latter-day Cocteau Twins way.
