Heaven or Las Vegas by Cocteau Twins

Heaven or Las Vegas, the sixth album from Scottish trio Cocteau Twins, came out on 4AD in September 1990, recorded at September Sound in Twickenham by Elizabeth Fraser, Robin Guthrie and Simon Raymonde. After years of drifting through gorgeous fog, the band let the sunlight in: the songs have firmer shapes and brighter tunes, Guthrie's guitars shimmer and chime over programmed beats, and Raymonde's bass gives the whole thing something solid to stand on.

Fraser still sings half the time in her own private language, swooping and fluttering through syllables that may or may not be words, but you can make out more of her than ever before. The title track and "Iceblink Luck" are dream pop at its most luminous and most direct. It reached the UK top ten, became the band's biggest commercial success, and is now held up as a landmark of the genre they helped invent.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.