Four-Calendar Cafe

Cocteau Twins | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (November 2, 1993)
• Original Release Date: November 2, 1993
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Capitol
• ASIN: B000002V21
• In-Print Editions: Audio CD
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (60 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #122,646 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Know Who You Are at Every Age

2. Evangeline

3. Bluebeard

4. Theft, And Wandering Around Lost

5. Oil of Angels

6. Squeeze-Wax

7. My Truth

8. Essence

9. Summerhead

10. Pur

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars i am not afraid of..., March 21, 2003

By 

Tyran Grillo (Ithaca, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Four-Calendar Cafe (Audio CD)

I am surprised at the negative press this album has received. Of course, I can imagine that those whose fondness lies more with their earlier, so-called "darker" sound would be disappointed in the comparatively weightless feel of this album. However, I feel that their stylistic shifts are all within the same world, and equally spectral in their capacity to ordain.

Four-Calendar Café is a very special album for me, for it expresses love so purely. When I say "love", I mean not only romance and youthful distractions, but friendship, connection, and love of the self. This is partly due to the vocal content which is uncharacteristically clear (although I think this was not for our benefit as listeners, but merely as an act of desired appropriation on Elizabeth Fraser's part), and to the lavish cradle of melodic weaving provided by her instrumental counterparts.

The album begins with "Know who you are at every age," the most exquisite and contextually unhidden description of grief I have ever heard. A gentle blossom of drums emerges from the digital silence and breaks into a steady lilt of guitars and bass, reminding me of a boat's motions upon water. Simon Raymonde's mournful bass line and Robin Guthrie's flanged guitars provide sympathetic waves over which the breeze of Fraser's voice blows. She sings of her own reluctance to accept the grief which threatens its cascade within her. She is also very much aware of her need to fall into acceptance in order to develop as a human being. The central motif is alive with multi-layered beauty. Her intonations ("I won't heal unless I cry...", "I can't grieve, so I won't grow...", etc) are lifted by the low drone of her voice underneath. This lower voice (best heard with headphones), which sings the same words in a subdued harmony, are, to me, the core of the song...as if they are an inner consciousness, telling her more gravely that she must let the process of another's death (or the death of a connection) cast its shadows upon her.

Next, "Evangeline" expounds upon the changes that emotions bring as one matures, and the desires which surface at the loss of that which is sacrificed to bring about a new self ("There is no going back...I can't stop feeling now..."). The way I feel this song is as a postlude to track 1, as if to show how she has moved on after accepting the grief she so naturally turned away from in the beginning, but which is now incorporated into her being ("I am not the same...I'm growing up again...").

"Bluebeard" develops this theme further. Now that she has come into acceptance of herself, she is ready to turn her attentions to a possible relationship with another, and addresses the possibility that trust may be an issue between them ("Are you the right man for me...Are you safe for me, my friend?...Or are you toxic for me...?"). The song flows delicately with the CT signature flair...building, subsiding, then overflowing in a beautiful climaxical movement. Fraser's soulful background vocals in the song's closing section are wonderfully honest (seeming almost to sing another song behind the main melodic line, a style of vocalization she explored quite beautifully in their later works).

In the next three songs, she has given herself completely to this man, and is contemplating her bodily power and possession in the wake of their consummation. And eventually, the balance of control in the relationship has become comfortable between them (possibly too comfortable), but sacred nonetheless, finding herself lost in the attractive side paths of consciousness. (The title of track 4, "Theft, and wandering around lost" seems to imply that through love-making, something was somehow taken from her, and she is wondering if the sacrifice was worth it.) These songs capture so beautifully the spirit of sharing one's soul and body with a lover, and the scattered thoughts one can experience in such attachments.

In "My Truth" she has let this person into her heart with trust and compassion. This song flowers with vulnerable strength and a certain truth of experience.

"Essence" somehow reminds me of "Lazy Calm" (from their stunning album Victorialand). It has a very subtle pulse to it, accentutated more by guitars than by drums, and feels like a crossing over into, or deepening of, a mature love that as risen beyond physicality.

"Summerhead" is alive with rejuvination and joyfulness. It glitters with the recognition of disagreements, but rejoices also in the perseverence of the love she has discovered. One of the Cocteau Twins' best, in my opinion.

There is a shift with "Pur" to an even greater understanding of character. She illuminates the gentle soul of her lover in an objective light, and recognizes the gifts she has imparted unto their child-creation as she goes forward into her own death. "Pur" pulls at my heart with its lamenting tone and sense of finality, and it often pains me when it ends (though in no unnatural manner).

This is an album for those who love, or those who yearn to know what it feels like.

I do not claim that my interpretations of this or any other music are definitive. I just wish to express how I have related to it. And as I often say in reference to CT, these interpretations are rather irrelevant, for the music is its own commentary. I just hope that maybe this expression of my passion can influence others to buy this who may have been uncertain before, and that they can find their own connections to its vast world of possibilities...

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Cocteau Twins' "happier" album?, September 19, 2002

By 

Eric McCalla "reviewboy" (Denver, COLORADO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Four-Calendar Cafe (Audio CD)

My first otherworldly experience with CT was my first (I'm on my third!) CD copy of PINK OPAQUE, which is still my absolute favorite CT work after enjoying and obsessing over their music since 1985.

Four-Calendar Cafe is probably my next favorite album, and it's hard to choose! There are moments in FCC that remind me of TREASURE and even more that remind me of BLUE BELL KNOLL. This is the album I give to friends and family as an introduction to CT's unique sound. I don't know of one person I've given it to who didn't rave about it.

There are five songs that I play endlessly when I'm not playing the entire album at a listening: first and foremost is Summerhead. Something about the intro and the melody just puts me in a great frame of mind, no matter how many times I've heard it. Then, Pur would be a close second, though the mood is the total opposite. Pur is one of the loveliest songs CT have ever produced. Lastly, in no particular order, because I enjoy all of them: Know Who You Are At Every Age, Theft & Wandering Around Lost, and Squeeze-Wax.

Though it's possible to UNDERSTAND Elizabeth Fraser's lyrics through many of the songs, it doesn't make this album less Cocteau-Twins worthy, as some reviewers have intimated. Nothing wrong with writing some intelligible lyrics, just as long as your entire album isn't that way, I'm OK with it!

A fab introduction if you don't know them. If you do go dig up a copy of PINK OPAQUE and keep it nearby. I play it weekly....especially Pepper Tree and Wax & Wane!!

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Probably their third best after Heaven and Treasure, November 12, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Four-Calendar Cafe (Audio CD)

I do not have the distinction of being a Cocteau Twins fan from way back. In fact, I became a fan of their music in 1998 when I first bought Heaven or Las Vegas. Since then, I have acquired 12 albums and EP's by the band. I actually may have more CT albums than any other single band in my collection.
What's my point? I think Four Calendar Cafe is hugely underrated by supposed "true" fans. In my opinion, FCC is perhaps the most lush, spacious sound they ever achieved besides Victorialand. It's not quite brilliant like Heaven or Las Vegas, nor is it the stunningly quirky musical triumph that Treasure is, but it is the most deep sounding album that the CT ever did.
There is just so much going on in the mix, so many subtle manipulations of echo and tape reverb, so much just plain weird stuff that somehow sounds just right since it is weilded with such precision by Robin Guthrie. FCC is probably the most confident and mature record or their catalog, and also the most inviting. Where some of their earlier stuff is great, weird and nervy, FCC is moody. It's got so much dimension to it, and the songs are just excellent.