Pitchfork: 30 Best Dream Pop Albums
by teague

https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-30-best-dream-pop-albums/

• Chart updated: 09/04/2021 21:15
• (Created: 09/04/2021 21:06).
• Chart size: 30 albums.

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1.

Heaven Or Las Vegas 

 Cocteau Twins

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Heaven or Las Vegas. You’re either in the good place or a gaudy replica designed to trick you. Sweet relief or a desert mirage. It sounds like a trap, doesn’t it? That’s kind of what the record was for Cocteau Twins, too. Six albums in, the gothy cult heroes of 4AD Records gave in completely to the pop urges they had flirted with on 1988’s Blue Bell Knoll and 1984’s Treasure. Happily, the resulting masterpiece not only defined the Scottish trio for good, it established an ethereal blueprint for dream pop. While there are countless examples of indie bands struggling to marry their deep weirdness to pop structures, the Cocteaus’ version of a slightly more commercial sound did not compromise their individual idiosyncrasies. Rather, it distilled them into something painfully gorgeous and utterly mesmerizing.

Elizabeth Fraser, Robin Guthrie, and Simon Raymonde were each going through heavy periods when they wrote and recorded Heaven or Las Vegas at their own September Sound Studios in London. Raymonde, the keyboard player and bassist, had just lost his father, composer Ivor Raymonde. Guthrie, the guitarist and drum programmer, was at the height of his cocaine addiction, and his partner, vocalist Fraser, was a new mother keeping things together. Fraser had been known for her impressionistic approach to melody, focusing more on the sounds of the words and effortlessly bending them into evocative gibberish with her piercing soprano. On Heaven or Las Vegas, though, you can actually tell that she is singing about her relationship and her daughter, still in an oblique and conflicted way but still with a newfound confidence she attributed to her pregnancy. At the time, dream pop was one of the few rock subgenres where overt femininity was not only tolerated, it was necessary. Fraser had already redefined how operatic vocals, glossolalia, and a vaguely new age aesthetic fit into the ’80s alternative world, but here she was being newly direct with declarations of motherly love—building hooks out of them, in fact, like on the effortlessly cool dance track “Pitch the Baby.” Arranging her peerless voice into more elaborate layers and flows, Fraser centered herself at the forefront of a band now pushing the limits of lushness.

The crucial counterpoint to Fraser’s voice can be found in Guthrie’s elaborate, effects-laden guitar loops, which sent reverb through the songs like an industrial fan whipping air around a warehouse. As a guitarist, Guthrie is to dream pop what Kevin Shields is to shoegaze. But by adopting a dazed, dreamy slide technique on songs like “Cherry-Coloured Funk,” one of the best scene-setting opening tracks ever, Guthrie cemented another aspect of his signature guitar jangle; it’s a tone you can hear traces of in everyone from Lush’s Miki Berenyi to the xx’s Romy Madley Croft to the Weeknd (quite literally). With Guthrie providing the blissful wave of noise, Raymonde adding the crucial ominous undertone, and Fraser tending to the otherworldly drama, the band reached the heights of their mood-setting abilities while still keeping most of the songs around three minutes. Not that you'd necessarily notice the song lengths: Heaven or Las Vegas is less a collection of tracks than a 37-minute journey to a surreal realm. You don’t know where you are, exactly; you just notice the warm feeling that washes over you when you arrive. Heaven, after all, is subjective. –Jillian Mapes

Year of Release:

1990

Appears in:

829 charts

Rank Score:

9,773

Rank in 1990:

2

Rank in 1990s:

30

Overall Rank:

143

Average Rating:

 84 (861 votes)

Comments:

53

19.

Blue Bell Knoll 

 Cocteau Twins

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The brilliance of Cocteau Twins is that they capture the lightness of dreams. Their pop sound is like they’ve dipped into your reveries and are playing them back to you. By the time Blue Bell Knoll, the Scottish band’s fifth album, came out in 1988, they had cemented this meld of glittery guitars and avian vocals, this talent for finding pure white in the black abyss of goth. This album, however, was their first significant U.S. release, introduced with their bewildering single “Carolyn’s Fingers.” On it, Elizabeth Fraser’s words are impossible to understand: Either they’re being spoken in another tongue, or you’ve temporarily developed aphasia and can’t compute them. Throughout the record, the trio strip back to their basic groundwork of bass-guitar melodies, a pattern they’d continue on Heaven or Las Vegas two years later. Blue Bell Knoll is not as dynamic a listen as that masterpiece, but its exploration of widescreen space is essential, and set down the canvas for glorious colors to come. –Eve Barlow

Year of Release:

1988

Appears in:

203 charts

Rank Score:

1,008

Rank in 1988:

26

Rank in 1980s:

261

Overall Rank:

1,679

Average Rating:

 77 (243 votes)

Comments:

9

Total albums: 2. Page 1 of 1

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Pitchfork: 30 Best Dream Pop Albums composition

Decade	Albums	%
1930s	0	0%
1940s	0	0%
1950s	0	0%
1960s	0	0%
1970s	0	0%
1980s	5	17%
1990s	8	27%
2000s	10	33%
2010s	7	23%
2020s	0	0%

Artist	Albums	%
Mazzy Star	2	7%
Low	2	7%
Beach House	2	7%
Galaxie 500	2	7%
Grouper	2	7%
Cocteau Twins	2	7%
Chromatics	1	3%
Show all

Country	Albums	%
	19	63%
	9	30%
	1	3%
	1	3%

Pitchfork: 30 Best Dream Pop Albums similar charts

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Pitchfork: 30 Best Dream Pop Albums ratings

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Rating	Date updated	Member	Chart ratings	Avg. chart rating
75/100	06/04/2025 15:58	Johnnyo	2,531	80/100

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