With 35 years passing since its release, the Cocteau Twins’ Heaven or Las Vegas remains an undoubtably iconic piece in the band’s discography and alternative pop music at large.
On September 17, 1990, the Cocteau Twins released their sixth studio album, Heaven or Las Vegas. Since its release, the album has continued to represent the pinnacle of the band’s sound, with Las Vegas tracks almost entirely encompassing the band’s most streamed songs. According to the Cocteau Twins’ website, as of July 2024, tracks from Heaven or Las Vegas made up six out of the band’s 10 most listened-to songs despite the eight other studio albums in their corpus.
Heaven or Las Vegas builds deep, sonic landscapes that are almost entirely reliant on instrumentals rather than building stories through lyrics, which tend to be purposefully incomprehensible in the mix.
Notably, the band’s website has a whole page dedicated to their mystifying lyrical approach. The band contends that their main goal is to focus most on the sound of their tracks, not the lyrical content. The Cocteau Twins’ lead vocalist Elizabeth Fraser expanded on this idea in a 1993 interview with Mondo 2000:
“Combining words in different languages that I couldn’t understand just meant I could concentrate on the sound and not get caught up in the meaning,” said Fraser. “They don’t mean anything, though, that’s the thing. You know all the transcendent sounds. It’s all sound all the way through.”
Perhaps no track speaks to this sense of transcendence better than the album’s opener in the light and airy “Cherry-coloured Funk,” a cut with an immediately uplifting soundscape that perfectly sets the stage for the album.
“Iceblink Luck” is another lighter cut, with Fraser’s vocals floating in high pitches over low, layered instrumentals.
One of my personal favourite songs on the album is the titular track, which is almost as popular as “Cherry-coloured Funk” as the two share a similar lighter atmosphere. The track is just plain fun, with the higher-pitched rhythmic instrumentals and Fraser’s vocals, which are slightly more intelligible than usual, lighting up the song.
Heaven or Las Vegas delightfully mixes more somber sonic atmospheres with lighter ones like the one found in the opening and title tracks.
“I Wear Your Ring” is one of these tracks with a more somber aesthetic. The song opens with a very deeply pitched synth instrumental. Fraser’s vocals are densely layered in this track, with lower and higher pitched takes over top of each other to intensify the sonic atmosphere.
The album also finishes with one of these more introspective and somber tracks in “Frou-frou Foxes in Midsummer Fires,” wherein deeper percussion and lower synth sounds contrast with Fraser’s angelic vocals until the standing-ovation-worthy closer.
Other stand-out tracks on the album include “Pitch the Baby,” a less intense track that maintains the album’s fun sound; “Fotzepolitic,” an upbeat cut backlit by rhythmic, quick paced instrumentals; and “Wolf in the Breast,” a slower song that encompasses a more thoughtful atmosphere.
Overall, Heaven or Las Vegas is undoubtably a standout piece of the Cocteau Twins’ work, with its influence on the band’s discography and the alternative dream-pop genre remaining undeniable, even after 35 years.