Cocteau Twins - Milk & Kisses

Nobody knew it at the time, but Milk & Kisses was goodbye. Released in 1996, the eighth Cocteau Twins studio album turned out to be their last, closing 14 years of music that sounded like nothing before it. The band split the following year, which leaves this as the final word from Elizabeth Fraser, Robin Guthrie and Simon Raymonde together.

It does not sound like an ending. The trio recorded and produced the album themselves during a stretch of high creativity, working between their September Sound studio in London and the coastal town of Pors Poulhan in Brittany, France. "Violaine" opens with some of the heaviest, most churning guitar Guthrie ever put on a Cocteau Twins record, while "Tishbite" is pure weightless pop, Fraser's voice looping and climbing over a melody that seems to float. Fan favorites "Serpentskirt" and "Treasure Hiding" go deeper into the dreamlike, slow-blooming territory the band made their own.

There is a calm running through the whole record, a sense of healing that critics picked up on at the time and that the title hints at. It is a cathartic listen, warm and soothing even at its saddest, and it has only grown in stature as new generations keep discovering the catalog. As swan songs go, few bands have left on a note this graceful.

This 4AD reissue returns the album to the band's original label, remastered by Robin Guthrie and pressed on vinyl in the US for the first time. The second of the two albums first issued by Capitol in America, it is the essential companion to Four-Calendar Café and the last chapter of an incredible legacy.