Possibly the most unambiguously joyful-sounding album the Cocteau Twins ever released, and almost certainly the prettiest,
Blue Bell Knoll to me does sound like bells, but just as much like laughter, and running water, and even, in some way that I can't quite nail down, like velvet; everything peals, but most of all Fraser's voice. "Carolyn's Fingers" is the most sheerly thrilling song on the album, and one of the most immediate and immediately great that they ever laid down; the more textural, cascading "Athol-Brose" is even better, running the full shimmering gamut of this, the band's graceful middle period. And in the smooth shear of the title track, with which it opens, and the blissed-out trip of "Ella Megalast Burls Forever", it has a nigh-on perfect pair of bookends.
I think that
Treasure is more touched by greatness than this one, and probably
Victorialand and the "Tiny Dynamine" and "Echoes in a Shallow Bay" eps too, but it's
Blue Bell Knoll that I've most steadily listened to over the years, and which I now think of as my favourite. The Cocteaus' music has always defied description - it's too unique, too far removed from everything else that even gets near it, for words to be useful. Suffice to say that
Blue Bell Knoll is one of those albums which reminds me of how magnificently transcendent music can be - after all this time, it's still sprinkled with that same otherworldly magic.
