"a fortress made of sugar ice"

"I hold by a theory I concocted about Cocteau Twins. That whereas the likes of The Cure, Siouxsie, PiL, Joy Division used the big bass and massive, spraying guitars as a means of disseminating angst, pain, disdain, scalding, purgative scorn, with The Cocteaus it was different. They used the same instrumentation to create a sense of blinding ecstasy, an incredibly powerful palliative. In interviews they would talk but not in an explanatory or introspective way. It was as if their music was a massive distraction, a brilliant confection, a fortress made of sugar ice to compensate for the private pain in their lives; and that their audience tacitly accepted their music as such. All that frou-frou, patchouli, glowbo, peppermint, it wasn't whimsy but grist to the cause. What they retained, however, always was a voluble, searing intensity, as if to imply that somewhere, anguish was being actively repressed, not wallowed in" - David Stubbs, recently