1986's Victorialand finds the Cocteaus at their absolute utmost ethereal. With Simon Raymonde stepping away to work with Ivo on the second This Mortal Coil album, Liz and Robin peel back the layers to show you how the sausage gets made, and what a sublime, lacey, atmospheric sausage it is, consisting of little more than a couple of guitar tracks and Liz’s vocals. You get a greater impression of their compositional genius, but with everything run through a complex maze of pedals and effects, you sadly don’t gain any insight into their tracking methods or overall recording process as you would with a typical ‘acoustic’ album; all the warts are washed away in reverb. This would be their most new agey sounding record before snapping into pop mode on Blue Bell Knoll, and it definitely vibes harder than anything else in their catalog. They finally ditched that drum machine loaded with Led Zep samples, fleshing out a sound palette which has allowed the record to age incredibly well - there’s even saxophone (played by Richard Thomas of Dif Juz). Also, one of the coolest and most underrated sleeves from legendary 4AD designer Vaughan Oliver (R.I.P.). Check out “Lazy Calm,” “Fluffy Tufts,” “Whale Tails,” “Little Spacey” and “Feet-Like Fins.” With the re-release of this and Garlands, all of the Cocteaus’ proper studio albums for 4AD are now thankfully back in print. Remastered from the original analog tapes with artwork faithful to the original 23 Envelope designs and code for digital download. Recommended.

• black vinyl pressing
• remastered from original analog masters
• includes printed insert
• digital download included
• music label: 4AD 2020

reviewed by Peppermint Pig 03/2020