It isn’t necessarily your first thought that the Cocteau Twins have Christmas content lurking somewhere in their catalog, but it turns out they do!
If you were a music fan in the early 1990s, you probably dimly recall the Volume “magazine” of CD compilations that were released pretty regularly between 1991 and 1997. They came with a thick booklet and they would always have a groovy picture of a tropical fish on the cover, remember those?
So the December 1992 edition (volume 5) included a cover by the Cocteau Twins of the Christmas classic “Frosty the Snowman”—according to Ned Raggett at Allmusic.com, the Cocteaus did it in part as “an acknowledgement that the band was still around.” Raggett also asserts that Robin Guthrie didn’t want to get involved with a religious-themed Christmas song, so went for something secular, which seems plausible enough.
For the holiday season a year later, the Cocteau Twins took their cover of “Frosty the Snowman” and added “Winter Wonderland” to create an EP called Snow consisting of only those two songs.
Snow came out in CD and 7-inch versions. The 7-inch is red and says “For jukeboxes only” on it.
Both tracks are a perfectly dreamy addition to your holiday repertoire.
“Frosty the Snowman”:
“Winter Wonderland”:
Thank you Joe Yachanin!
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Cocteau Twin Simon Raymonde interviewed this week on ‘The Pharmacy’
Bauhaus, Japan, Cocteau Twins and more on ‘The Old Grey Whistle Test’