The Spangle Maker by Cocteau Twins

The Spangle Maker, a Cocteau Twins EP issued by 4AD in April 1984, was the first record out after Simon Raymonde came aboard, and you can hear the trio settling into the shimmer that would define them. Robin Guthrie's guitars smear into great glowing banks of echo, and Elizabeth Fraser sings in a soprano that treats words as pure sound, rarely bothering with a language anyone could name.

It carries a longer cut of "Pearly-Dewdrops' Drops", the song that became their highest-charting UK single, taped at Rooster in West London, plus two B-sides, the title track and "Pepper-Tree", which were cut at Palladium Studios in Edinburgh and then mixed back at Rooster. All three turned up in the band's live shows. The sleeve borrows a photograph by Gertrude Käsebier, and the 1991 CD reissue tacks on the trimmed 7-inch edit of "Pearly-Dewdrops' Drops".

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