Cocteau Twins "Heaven or Las Vegas" [1990]

If you should ever get bummed out that you missed out on when they used to put codeine in cough medicine, all you have to do to reach a similar affect is put on the Cocteau Twins' "Heaven or Las Vegas" CD -- a blurry, synthey echo chamber with a double-shot of estrogen which comes off like some simplistic hodgepodge of Kate Bush and Enya covering Julee Cruise versions of Abba's greatest hits while under heavy sedation. Scottish elfin soprano Beth Orton cashes in her indie cred by singing actual words this time, just like when everyone could tell that Michael Stipe had sold out. But everything she sings is still so covered in the sticky gauze of cotton candy on "Heaven or Las Vegas," she may as well been still spouting gibberish. Harmonizing with herself elsewhere, Orton sounds like if The Roches were soft-serve ice cream. You'd really need to try in order to find something more annoyingly angelic as this album; Orton finds herself backed here by a catatonic New Order floating on a cumulus cloud. Listen to "Heaven or Las Vegas" long enough and you'll begin to feel yourself drifting off and blowing away -- popping like so many bubbles in the bath, and each of the songs on this endless fake Wyndham Hill composition has a similar emptiness inside each one.