On October 18th, 1993, Cocteau Twins released their seventh studio album Four-Calendar Cafe, an album which was named after William Least Heat-Moon‘s book Blue Highways, where the author rates the quality of a restaurant by the number of calendars it has hanging on its walls.
The record was a departure in sound with it’s more pop-oriented melodies, continuing the change begun on the band’s previous record Heaven or Las Vegas, but with even more intelligible lyrics from Elizabeth Fraser’s vocals this time around.
With some irony, this led to Chinese-Pop star Faye Wong recording officially sanctioned Cantonese covers of the album’s tracks “Bluebeard” and “Know Who You Are At Every Age”. Faye Wong would then go onto performing backing vocals on the final Cocteau Twins album Milk and Kisses, as well as covering material from that record, and a new track “Yu Le Chang” with guitarist Robin Guthrie and bassist Simon Raymonde.
Four-Calendar Cafe was the first Cocteau Twins record to not be released on longtime label 4AD. The album was released in the US via Capital Records, with singles and promo videos released for:
Bluebeard
Evangeline
Tracklist:
- Know Who You Are at Every Age
- Evangeline
- Bluebeard
- Theft, and Wandering Around Lost
- Oil of Angels
- Squeeze-Wax
- My Truth
- Essence
- Summerhead
- Pur
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